A Pepper Grinder Post

April Fool!

I'm sure it happens every now and then, but I can't remember the last time that Easter fell on April Fool's Day. At first it seemed kind of weird and irreverent to me. Celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and his utter victory over the forces of evil on a day dedicated to stupid pranks?

Then I thought about it some more, and it seemed perfect to me. Pilate thought he was finished with that pesky trouble-maker. The Jewish leaders thought they were free of the man who infuriated them by pointing out their hypocrisy so clearly. Satan and the forces of evil thought they had won a great battle and defeated God's own son. The disciples thought the man they had put their trust in had let them down.

But come Easter morning, guess what? April fool! They were all wrong. The great victory of evil had turned into a far greater victory for God and his Son. The dashing of all the disciples' hopes had become the start of something more amazing than they could have imagined.

I see God doing something like this on a much smaller scale in my life. I have my plans, and then God allows something to come in and wreck them. April fool! I can either spend my time feeling tense and frustrated that things didn't go the way I wanted, or I can look for God's better plan.

God's April fool jokes are different from ours in a crucial way. Our pranks are, at best, designed to give us a good laugh. At worst, they humiliate. The purpose of God's great jokes is to give us something much better than we had imagined for ourselves.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' " (Mark 16:1-7 NIV)

- Pepper
Posted 2018-03-31