My favourite cartoon character is the Road Runner. Fast. Cheeky. Never gets caught. Always chirpy! I want to get a Road Runner tattoo, but I’m a bit old!!
Poor old Wile E Coyote tries everything to catch him, but only manages to blow himself up, fall from great heights, get hit by a freight train and have things drop on his head.
Must admit, I have many more days when I feel more like ‘Wile’ than I do feeling like the Road Runner. Disappointments, falls, failures. Particularly in the spiritual aspect of life.
I know how Peter must have felt, when standing around that fire, having witnessed Jesus being arrested, pretending he didn’t know him.
I’ve done that.
Either outright denial, or just keeping quiet when there was a nice little opening to insert my faith and convictions into a conversation.
In Luke’s Gospel, he mentions that Peter followed the arrest party at a distance; near enough to see Jesus, but not near enough to be seen with Jesus. Then, after denying Jesus three times, and the cock crowing, Luke says that ‘the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter’. And Peter went away and cried bitterly.
The anvil on the head. The dynamite exploding. The fall from a high cliff.
Guilt.
How hard we try in life to avoid this feeling. All sorts of blame, and justifications, and excuses. So we don’t have to feel guilty.
It’s not a nice feeling.
Peter shed tears – tears of guilt, of remorse, of regret.
In the ensuing days came the cross, and the resurrection. And before long another fire, this one built by Jesus on a beach.
And forgiveness was given – three times.
And the guilt was gone.
That’s what Easter does for me. I feel the guilt of my sins, as I should; I feel the hurt that I cause my Lord when I deny Him or keep quiet; the cross makes me feel guilty.
And I shed tears.
But the resurrection wipes it all away. Like Wile E Coyote, I’m able to pick myself up, brush myself off, and ready myself to pack more explosives or paint tunnels on cliffs and resume the chase – full again of hope. Forgiven. I serve a Risen Saviour.
Max Lucado said ‘Mingle the tears of the sinner with the cross of the Saviour and the result is a joyful escort out of the canyon of guilt’.
May that be your experience this Easter.
www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington
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