Barry's Blog

"Tell me: What came first, Easter or the egg?Crucifixion or daffodils? Three days in a tomb or four days in Paris? (returning Bank Holiday Monday).

When is a door not a door? When it is rolled away. When is a body not a body? When it is risen.
Question. Why was it the Savior rode on the cross? Answer. To get us to the other side.

Behold I stand. Behold I stand and what? Behold I stand at the door and...
knock knock."  -Steve Turner, Poem for Easter

"Oh, you're real, you're real! Oh, Aslan! cried Lucy and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses. "But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer. "It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." -C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

"Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cell's dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acides rekindle, the Church will fall...Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door... The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache', not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day." -from John Updike's, "Seven Stanzas at Easter."

"We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do no make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."  -C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory."

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep... Now if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God...and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins...If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied." -The apostle Paul to the Corinthians, 1 Corithians 15: 3-6, 14-19