allergy season

My Easter wasn't the most pleasant of days. In years past I'm generally outside enjoying some amazing weather, but since last year I have developed allergies. I don't know how or why it didn't affect me in earlier years, but this year it has hit me with no mercy. For the past month I've been having all kinds of random crappy feelings and I actually thought I was getting better and coming out of the allergy funk until Easter morning. My body was ready to wake up and get ready for church, but a funny thing happened when I tried to open my eyes to get out of bed... my eyes didn't open. They were shut from this nasty gunky stuff that came outta nowhere.

I got up rinsed my eyes out with water and saw that they were bright red. Pink Eye. So I went back to sleep for a few more hours because I knew I couldn't go to church and give it to everyone. My mom has really bad allergies and pink eye is sometimes a cause of it for her so she has some medicine just in case, and of course it didn't help me at all, so we had to head to urgent care last night and get some more powerful stuff.

After waking up today it still hasn't gotten much better so my mom talked to an eye doctor friend of hers (Mitchell Bailey's dad actually) and he knows his stuff so he said that a bunch of people are getting like a stronger pink eye I guess that requires two different medicines, so my eyes are pretty drugged up. I did get to miss class today though which is kinda nice except I haven't been able to be very productive with other stuff I need to get done.

Being stuck inside has let me have a good bit of time to think about Easter and what it really is though. It amazes me to think about it. For the most part most of the people in this country probably agree with a few things...

1)Jesus was a real human being who lived about 2000 years ago
2)Jesus's teachings were "good" and that he was a good man
3)Jesus died on a cross after being beaten brutally, and was then buried

BUT the key part of what Easter is and who Jesus is, is the fact that Jesus's life didn't end there. The Bible teaches, with hundreds of people as witnesses, that the heavily guarded, stone covered tomb that he was buried in was EMPTY 3 days later, and that Jesus actually came back to life after physically dying one of the most brutal deaths imaginable.

I don't think that everyone is on the same page with that one. If we were then I think the world would look a lot different. I mean I have never seen anyone actually come back to life. As Wade Joye might put it, Jesus told death to "make him a sandwich". It's incredible. It changes everything forever.

So what happens after Jesus comes back to life? He appears to people, Mary Magdalene first and then the disciples (except for Thomas at first), they are overjoyed. So they tell Thomas, and they are just so happy to tell him that Jesus is back and alive and Thomas doesn't believe it, in fact he says the only way he will believe is if he literally sees Jesus and then puts his own fingers in the holes where the nails were from the cross. It's made me wonder how many Thomas's are still around even in today's world. Thomas believed Jesus existed, he was one of his followers. He knew Jesus was killed and buried, but even when his closest friends told him that they saw Jesus back from the dead, he doesn't believe that. The only way they can convince him is if they show him Jesus.

Jesus comes again and this time Thomas is with them. Jesus lets him touch where the nails went through, his scars. Thomas instantly believes. Whats interesting to me is that obviously Jesus could conquer death so couldn't he easily have filled up the scars from where the nails went through? I think so, but what would be the need? To see the scars and what damage it should have taken on him, and to see him there fully restored to life is amazing. I know when I decided to follow Jesus I got new life and yeah I think I still have scars to show from the life I was living, but it's what makes it amazing. To hear and see where Jesus can take a person is what it takes for people to believe. Some people have been hearing about this Jesus guy for a long time but they don't see him because his followers aren't showing their scars and showing people Jesus.

Yeah bit of a long post but hopefully you enjoyed what's going on in my allergy filled head.