Today is Friday, March 25th, 2016; Karen's Korner #3275

Today's Karen's Korner was written by John Crozier, a Clarion-Goldfield High School graduate and currently serving as a missionary in Poland with his wife Zaba and their family. This is something he wrote and emailed to family and friends yesterday.

So an Easter note from halfway around the world from John:


"Jesus and His disciples once walked into a restaurant after a long day of ministering to the crowds that followed and asked for a table to seat 26. A little surprised at their request, the server looked at the dusty men, took a quick head count, and said, 'But there are only 13 of you. Why do you want a table for so many?'

"Jesus looked at the server and said, 'We like to sit on only one side of the table.'

"It's probably fair to say we've all got a few preconceived ideas about the disciples and the carpenter from Galilee. Could it be that Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper speaks to our imagination more than the stories of the Gospels themselves?

"We're not alone. Jesus spent much of His last week with the disciples helping them adjust preconceived notions of the Messiah and the kingdom He embodied---one they thought characterized by power and authority in the face of a very real and present occupier. Otherwise known as Rome.

"But the Easter story speaks of a very different King. A King we just might miss if we spend time alongside the disciples looking for a political, top-down, power hungry man of God.

"Instead, Jesus' Easter message went something like this:

"For whoever want to save his life will lost it......"

"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last...."

"Whoever wants to become great among you must be servant........"  Mark 8 - 10

"Could it be that His Kingdom was seen best in the dependent, joyful, innocent, and altogether faithful glance of the child He held up as an example of what it means to belong in the encroaching spiritual Kingdom of God? A time when the small and often unnoticed turn power on it's head in the name of Jesus. I really believe that Easter and Christianity most surely belong to that child and to those words of inversion which so easily fall on uninterested ears in a world focused on authority, moral rightness, and 'holding onto the upper hand'.

"That first Easter in Jerusalem was the beginning of an upside-down, back-to-front, paradoxical, and often misunderstood message of the Messiah.

"We hope that unsettling message brings you joy, hope, and forgiveness as you celebrate Easter over the next few days. We hope you take a few moments to go back to the words and movements of that first Easter captured in the Gospels -- a story that adjusted and continues to work on preconceived notions of what Easter is all about."

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