The Yogi Bus Driver – Easter and its Significance
It almost feels like the start of spring. Well, it would, if it wasn’t so chilly!
Easter, I’m talking about.
It is preceded by a general change in weather conditions, for the better hopefully, with daffodils lining the roads and dual carriageways of many routes of cars, cycles and indeed, busses.
Blossom is all around (how do the trees know exactly when it’s time to blossom anyway? Do they talk to each other or something? I suppose they do, in a subtle way… Nature never ceases to amaze me. The changing of the seasons was something I missed when I lived overseas. Funny, you wouldn’t think that it would have such an impact, would you, till it isn’t there!).
School holidays, two more weeks off for the kids, and a welcome reduction in traffic as families stop rushing into, and out from school, and travel further afield, away to sunny destinations for a fortnight, or Grandma’s house for a long weekend.
But what’s behind it all?
What’s Easter about…?
Easter is Christianity’s most important and oldest festival.
It is the celebration of the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus, that’s the rising from the dead, of Christ.
If we think about this for a moment, we can see that in today’s world, the concept of rising from the dead is impossible…or is it? I have heard of several cases where a person has been pronounced dead, and has later come back to life! (This shows me that there are two separate things here; the body, and the soul. It’s as if the soul is hiding from view for a short time, until it re-awakens its body in order to finish off some task, or to resolve some outstanding issues). There are plenty of accounts of such events on the Internet, but my favourite one is in a video on YouTube called, ‘Life after Life’ by a Doctor named Moody, and it’s well worth checking out. In this video there are many documentations of re-incarnation, one of which is of a man who gets struck by lightning, and is burnt to a frazzle. The body is sent to the morgue, and a few hours later, the man comes back to life! He later explains in the video that he couldn’t move due to his body being so badly burnt, but could only blow air through is mouth to raise the white sheet that was laid over his dead body till someone noticed. Wooooow, can you imagine being the one to find him!!
Back to Easter. Jesus’s body, after being crucified on the cross for the sake of mankind, was put into a cave, and a huge rock was place in fount of the entrance. After three days, several women went to the tomb to ‘anoint the body’, this means to apply oils to the body, but they were met by angels saying that Jesus had ‘risen’, and indeed, his body was gone. The angels told the women to inform his disciples, but on the way to do this, they met Jesus, (maybe this was his subtle, angelic form) and they fell to his feet. “Do not be afraid” he said, “Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, where they will see me”.
Jesus was seen at least 12 times by different people after that over the next 40 days.
What an amazing story. This is truly a Great Soul. I am not Christian, but have much respect for Jesus Christ, the founder of the Christian Church. His message to humanity was of Love, and he embodied this message fully.
Easter Eggs were always a winner in my house as a kid
Really, it was just an excuse to eat loads of chocolate, and not get told off about it. There were some years that I remember getting six or seven medium, and, one or two large Easter Eggs, and on top of that, my Nan would always give the kids an egg box full of chocolate cream eggs, and my Mum and Dad would actually let us (my brother and sister and I) eat them all whenever we wanted!!
That really was a ‘miracle’, all that CHOCOLATE on one day.
I’m not quite sure how the Easter Bunnies came into existence?
They say the hare or rabbit, is the bringer of spring, and checks if children are behaving well enough to deserve chocolate eggs.
(Sounds like a marketing ploy set up to sell even more chocolate, to me, but it’s a great chance to run around the garden laughing and shouting, looking under bushes for….yes, you guessed it, more CHOCOLATE, ha!)
Easter is made up of ‘Good Friday’, which is the day Jesus was crucified, then Easter Sunday, the day of the rising of Christ, and this falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the northern spring equinox. This means Easter changes dates each year, and that’s why people say that Easter is ‘Late’ this year, or ‘Early’.
Interesting, isn’t it…
Happy Easter