It Isn't Nonsense
Definition Fish Story:
An exaggerated story : a story that is so strange or surprising that it seems very unlikely to be true. He told a ridiculous fish story about a swarm of giant mosquitoes.
Well, I've got quite a Fish Story for you! A true Fish Story.
A child of an aqcaintance, a kindergartener, is given to telling tall tales. Recently, he told a story to his classmates about catching 100 catfish in his back yard, some of them with his own bare hands. When his teacher questioned him about it, he insisted it was all true.
So the teacher decided to take it up with his mother, expecting her to refute the story. Instead, the mom said it was a crazy, true thing, and even had some pictures with him holding a catfish in his hands and grinning from ear to ear.
Apparently, where they live there are two ponds on a hill just behind their property, one situated just above the other. Recently, after some extreme rainfalll, the upper pond overflowed its banks, spilling over and downhill to the second, already swollen pond, which in turn then overflowed into their back yard, turning the entire yard into a two to three inch deep mud puddle full of catfish. Okay, so mayber there weren't a hundred fish flapping about in the yard, but there were many, MANY fish there -- enough that, to a young child, would appear to be a hundred.
To the ears of the teacher, who did not with her own eyes witness the event, his story sounded like nonsense.
Surely, as the women returned from the tomb that first Easter morning, proclaiming the news of the resurrected Lord, their claims were met with incredulity -- a mere Fish Story -- baseless fantasy. As the definition goes, to the recipients of the news, it was nothing more than "an exaggerated story : a story that is so strange or surprising that it seems very unlikely to be true."
Luke 24 (NIV):
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.
9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Oh, but it WAS true! And anyone with enough curiosity, who cared to know its veracity, could check it out and see for themselves. Such was the case with Peter,
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
In a world of skeptics, be a Peter. Run to the tomb to see for yourself!
Not in the Grave
Inside Edition reports:
In 2000, Fatima and Kamaron Hickman welcomed the birth of their first and only child together on Aug. 21 in Landstuhl, Germany, where the young Army couple was stationed.
Jada Hickman died of SIDS when she was only 6 months old. Her parents grieved her death, burying her at Hillcrest Memorial Park. Over 20 years later, her parents decided to exume her body and have it cremated so that a part of her could be with each of them no matter where they were.
But when the cemetary attempted to exume her body, they could not find it. According to Inside Edition:
The anguished parents of Jada Hickman say there is nothing left of their baby's remains after 22 years at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Augusta, Georgia. Not her casket, not her white dress, not her shoes, not her tiny body or skeleton. "As we discussed with you, we apologize that due to the passage of time, we were unable to recover the remains of your daughter," wrote a cemetery official in an email to the mother.
Jada's body couldn't be found, whether because (as the cemetary claims) she had already rapidly decomposed, or because (as her father claims) she was buried in the wrong place, or because she was never actually buried at all.
But the story for Jesus is different. Jesus' body couldn't be found because He rose from the grave! And this wasn't 20 years later, but on the third day, when there was no confusion about where or how He was buried.
The plain truth is that Jesus rose. No sorrow. No confusion. Just incomparable joy!
Our risen Savior, with us always ... everywhere we go.
He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ...
Then Jesus came to them and said, "...surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” - Matthew 28:6, 20, NIV
Ordinary No More
I remember when I lived in the Northeast, there was this tree that blended in with all of the rest ... until Fall came. That's when it would become the most brilliant and the most beautiful of all the trees in our area.
Seeing that beautiful tree always made me think of the resurrection when some pretty ordinary people will literally burst forth and shine with differing degrees of glory, depending only upon their love for God.
Amazing stuff is coming people!
"The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:41-42).