Glob-a-log

They say the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Well, they are right: He does. I’m talking about the Son now, by the way, not the Daddy.

We first read about it in Matthew 28; 1-6:

[1] In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
[2] And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.
[3] His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:
[4] And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
[5] And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.
[6] He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.

The Bible is a great book, full of wonderful and very gruesome stories. As far as we know most of the Old Testament was written when the Jews were living in exile, in Babylon. So, they told all these wild stories round the campfire, trying to cheer each other up. Like little boys they would boast about the strength of their Father, Jahweh, and would tell tall tales about glorious victories, bloody revenge and grandiose escapes from their earlier period of bondage in Egypt.

Wonderful stories all. Maybe not perfectly reliable and historically correct but when you’re lying down by the rivers of Babylon, weeping for and remembering Zion, well, then you’re more in need of a good yarn than objective truth.

Anyway, back to Jesus and His mysterious ways.

As I said, the Bible is a fun book but at times you need to remove quite a lot of tinsel before you can see the tree again.

So, maybe we should forget about that earthquake, or angels descending from Heaven and rolling back rocks.

I’m not saying Jesus hadn’t done an Elvis and left the building – just that it might have been for slightly more mundane reasons than the Bible claims.

You’re not convinced?

Well then, let me tell you that the episode mentioned by Matthew in the King James Bible was not the last time Jesus did a runner.

In fact, He did it again just a few days ago – and you know what? This time the story wasn’t told by a disgruntled slave, weeping for Zion or one of those sentimental and rather thick apostles but penned down by a professional journalist.

Which could explain the lack of caves, earthquakes, angels and what have you.

It’s still a nice story though:

Anonymous residents on Lindy Lane claim a woman called Jean Mansel isn’t picking up after her dogs, so to entice her to do so, they took something close to her heart. Those residents say their Mansel’s wiener dogs leave their leavings in their yard.

So, they stole her 80 pound statue of Jesus.

Mansel says she cherishes her cement Jesus statue; it was an heirloom from her late uncle.

“There were footprints behind it, and footprints in front of it,” she says, pointing out where the statue used to be.

It was Thursday morning when Jean walked outside to find Jesus gone.

“My husband got a phone call and a real raspy voice over the phone said ‘check your mailbox’.”

In the mailbox was a ransom note.

“The note basically said they were holding Jesus for ransom.”

The note reads: “We are holding Jesus ransom until you clean up the poopie from your wieners and trust us we see you take your wieners for long walks w/out picking up their poopie in our yards. This has upset us dearly so please clean up all the wiener poopie, if you want to see Jesus unharmed. Sincerely, Lindy Lane Residents.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 21:53 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.