The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

As our world hits pause in just a few short weeks on Sunday, April 17 to celebrate Easter, there might not be a more important moment in our lifetime to consider the deepest questions of the human experience than right now. War, tragedy, and pain have a way of letting the issues of “first importance” rise to the surface while the silly rhetoric dissipates. My guess is nobody is debating masking strategies in Kyiv right now; there are far more urgent matters. As C. S. Lewis said:

“We can ignore pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The images coming out of Ukraine are tragic — the right response is sorrow, empathy, and even anger toward the atrocities being done. But don’t dismiss the opportunity to do personal inventory; pretending as if the problem of evil only exists somewhere “out there” and isn’t somewhere “in me.”

The great Russian philosopher Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”

What this global atrocity should do for all of us is cause us to ask the deeper questions in life. As it’s been famously said before, “nobody is an atheist in the foxhole.” Disillusionment and conflict have a way of opening the mind and the heart to life’s most important questions. Questions like:

•?What is the meaning and purpose of life?

•?Is there a transcendent being who defines good and evil? If not then how can we define good and evil?

•?What do we do and where do we go with our grief, our pain, and our fear?

As we think about the coming day of Easter in 2022, might I encourage you to move beyond the chocolate bunnies, the eggs, and the perfect honey-glazed ham (which is delicious by the way)? This Easter I invite you to consider that there’s a far better story with a far more glorious resolution than any fairy tale could ever offer. There’s actually a better answer, a better solution, and a deeper peace available than any political ideology or leader could ever promise. The story of God’s reign and rule ends with a prophetic vision of life under the reign and rule of Jesus Christ. Listen to this description (from Isaiah 2:4):

“And they (the nations) will beat their swords into plowshares;

And their spears into pruning hooks;

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

Neither shall they learn war anymore.”

This destination of global peace and a restored world where there is harmony, unity, and relational oneness is actually no fairy tale at all. It’s the promise accessible to everyone who gladly welcomes the reign and rule of the true King of heaven and earth... Jesus Christ. Through his royal reign and rule, Easter and its fruit are accessible to all.