EASTER IS HOPE!

There is nothing as hopeful as Easter!  Just imagine a time when you thought something had turned out completely different than your plan.  Imagine how lost and confused those disciples were when their ideas seemed to turn to nothing but pain and loss.  We've all been in a dark place of loss like that.  Sometimes over much less than the loss of a friend and a loss of a dream all in one act.  Not to mention being put in a position of making a possibly life-threatening decision.  It so reminds me of the story of

THE DRAWBRIDGE KEEPER.....

(copied without permission from yannyblessing.blogspot.com, who copied it, I think, from One Month to Live )

There was once a bridge that spanned a large river.  During most of the day, the bridge sat with its length running up and down the river paralleled with the banks, allowing ships to pass through freely on both sides of the bridge.  But at certain times each day, a train would come along and the bridge would be turned sideways across the river, allowing the train to cross it.

A switchman sat in a shack on one side of the river where he operated the controls to turn the bridge and lock into place as the train crossed.

One evening as the switchman was waiting for the last train of the day to come, he looked off into the distance through the dimming twilight and cause sight of the train lights.  He stepped onto the control and waited until the train was within a prescribed distance.  Then he was to turn the bridge.  He turned the bridge into position, but, to his horror, he found the locking control did not work.  If the bridge was not securely in position, it would cause the train to jump the track and go crashing into the river.  This would be a passenger train with many people aboard.

He left the bridge turned across the river and hurried across the bridge to the other side of the river, where there was a lever switch he could hold to operate the lock manually.

He would have to hold the lever back firmly as the train crossed.  He could hear the rumble of the train now, and he took hold of the lever and leaned backwards to apply his weight to it, locking the bridge.  He kept applying the pressure to keep the mechanism locked.  Many lives depended on this man's strength.

Then, coming across the bridge from the direction of his control shack, he heard a sound that made his blood run cold.

"Daddy, where are you?"  His four-year-old son was crossing the bridge to look for him.  His first impulse was to cry out to the child, "Run!  Run!"  But the train was too close; the tiny legs would never make it across the bridge in time.

The man almost left his lever to snatch up his son and carry him to safety.  But he realized that he could not get back to the lever in time if he saved his son.

Either many people on the train or his own son -- must die.

He took but a moment to make his decision.  The train sped safely and swiftly on its way; and no one aboard was even aware of the tiny broken body thrown mercilessly into the river by the on rushing train.  Nor were they aware of the pitiful figure of the sobbing man, still clinging to the locking lever long after the train had passed.  They did not see him walking home more slowly that he had ever walked; to tell his wife how their son had brutally died.

Now, if you comprehend the emotions that wen through this man's heart, you can begin to understand the feelings of Our Father in Heaven when He sacrificed His Son to bridge the gap between us and eternal life.

Can there be any wonder that He caused the earth to tremble and the skies to darken when His Son died?  How does He feel when we speed along through life without giving a thought to what was done for us through Jesus Christ? 

(The story has also been adapted to a movie and touched many lives.)

Our choices are usually not that bleak or earthshaking, but they can still leave us in a very dark place.  When that happens, I pray that the hope of Easter will come back to you.  I pray that you will be able to hope for what God has planned that is bigger than you can imagine.  The disciples did not dare to dream during that dark day.  They did not know where to turn.  So they turned to each other and kept themselves available. They stopped their world at least for a little while and waited.  And I cannot imagine the joy of that day, when Jesus came back into that room.  

I would hope that the ending of the Drawbridge Keeper is left off of the story above.  I would hope that the man's story did find its way into the knowledge of those people and that they got a chance to acknowledge the sacrifice. In effect it is, when anyone has stopped to read the story and consider the actions of that man, then his actions bring hope and purpose back to the giver.  Anytime anyone retells the story, honor is given to the sacrifice.  

And so it is with Jesus' story. May we continue to honor the sacrifice of Our Heavenly Father by reading, listening, and retelling the story and never "speeding along through life without giving a thought".  God has blessed you, pass it on!!