Sayings of a Gadfly
by Max Maxwell


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EASTER FAITH

 A pastor said, “On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.  Paul wrote that, ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.’  If we do not believe in the miraculous resurrection of Jesus, then our Christian faith is destroyed.” 

 The Gadfly responded, “No doctrine is the fullness of your faith.  As a seed sown in the heart of the earth is not a tree, neither are the beliefs sown in your heart a faith.  If you do not love others as yourself, you will sow unlove, and there is no resurrection which shall keep you from reaping its grim and bitter fruit.  And there is no God who will stop you from eating that fruit with a twisted face and a mourning heart.  Even if Christ were raised a thousand times by a thousand angels, you must still eat the fruit that comes from the tree of your own heart.   If Christ has not been raised, then those who love will still love.  And faith shall continue to bear human souls upon lively wings.  For dirty bones have no power to destroy the faith of those who embrace life with the fullness of their heart.  Jesus the human, not the God, defines Christianity.  It was the Jesus who walked in flesh and blood who taught that the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets is to love your neighbor as yourself.   If you cannot embrace the teaching of the man, then his death is meaningless, and belief in his resurrection is nothing but a storm of faithlessness that darkens the world with despair.   Belief is, at best, a wandering butterfly that adds a splash of beauty to the springtime of your heart.  But love sinks its roots deep into the heart of life through all the seasons.  And even from the coldest grip of winter’s neglect, love shall be raised.  And from this resurrection pours forth the fruits of human dignity, which are ever born again as the blossoms of true faith.”
 

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© Copyright 2014 Kenneth J Maxwell Jr.