A Man Went Free!

Easter is coming soon! Holy week starts tomorrow with Palm Sunday! My favorite holiday! I miss the routines of the holidays that we established when the kids were little. I miss the Ukrainian egg decorating with the Triggs, the sunrise service over Lake Michigan, and watching the kids racing to find the plastic eggs before the squirrels got to them to name a few.

Here are some snippets of my traditions which I still practice:

LENT: I have been so blessed by the lent project online at Biola ( http://ccca.biola.edu/lent/ ) .

And I watched my favorite Easter movie, Saved by Grace starring Tom Conti but my old VHS tape is so worn out that I had to break down and order a DVD to replace it.  So worth it.

This poem was written by my sweet friend Ruth Senter and I memorized before I ever even knew her!

A MAN WENT FREE

A man went free the day you died,
Barabbas.
Hero. Macho Man.
The People’s Choice.
They cut his chains and
Buried his past in his empty prison cell.
Murder. Insurrection.
It didn’t matter.
But they nailed you down,
Strapped you with the weight of a cross
While he walked away clean.
They restored his dignity to him;
Freeman. Pardoned. No more labels.
But they stripped you,
Gave you thorns for your crown,
A weed for his scepter
And a line in the obituary column that read:
JESUS, KING OF THE JEWS.
They shouted his name through the city:
Blazed it in neon lights
And put a marquee around it
While they drove you to the place of the Skull,
Gave you vinegar to drink
And threw dice for your clothing.
When darkness came,
You bowed your head and died alone
While he celebrated in the streets
With the Passover crowd.

A man went free the day you died.
I was that man.