Easter Letter To Jesus

Dear Jesus,

I’ve been wanting to write to you for a long time. To be honest, the reason I haven’t is that my heart breaks into uncountable shards when I think of you.

I remember when you came to me on that winter night in 1973, after walking home from the Wednesday night youth for Christ soirée with Kevin. We hugged goodbye and shouted “maranatha!” to each other and I headed along my street among the thick snowflakes dancing down from infinity, each one humming like its own small crystal bell.

I lay in my bed buzzing from Jesus-love and God-mystery and the lingering fragrance of strawberry that wafted from Carol Stevenson’s hair and the pink shine on her Jesus-prayer lips.

And you came to me. At first as one of the ten thousand snowflakes drifting down, then growing into the shape of a white dove passing through the ceiling, down, down into my forehead where you burst like silver fireworks through my whole body.

As I trembled, love for everyone coursed through me - everyone, even for Troy Ondreczeck and his weaselly little sidekick, Scottie, who tried to beat me up that one night even though we used to be friends but they had become victims of reefer madness exactly like the movie predicted.

Your words “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” filled the inside of my ears and I felt bad for whatever sadness was inside them.

And your words “By their fruits ye shall know them,” floated around me, and I knew that’s the only way to judge a true Christian from a false one. I somehow knew that you would always be there as a mirror for me to check my falseness in, and it would always be up to me whether or not to look in the mirror.

The next day I tried to tell Kevin about you, and about how we should forgive people, and love them, and try to remember that people have a lot going on that we can’t see, and that God is too big for us to understand. And Kevin rebuked me, saying that everyone who is wrong is going to hell and we should not give them a second thought. Then he listed a whole bunch of kinds of people who are going to hell, and the one that really got me thinking was “people who live downtown.”

So, Jesus, what I’m trying to say is, you’ve been with me for 54 years now and the white dove isn’t the only way you’ve come to me.

But when I think of you, I can’t help but think of Kevin. And my other friend, Dirk, who went to a giant youth for Christ convention in Dallas and when he came back he asked me if I had been saved and I started to describe how you came through my ceiling and filled me with - - he cut me off, and with his beautiful blue eyes gleaming like the sheen on a freshly sharpened sword, he said, “No! You are not saved until I decide that you are.”

So, Jesus, every time I think of you, my heart breaks. Because Kevin and Dirk seem to be everywhere, and I don’t understand how, but they became your spokespeople. They rolled the stone back into place and told you to stay in there and shut up. And that’s why my heart breaks, and that’s why I haven’t written to you over the years even though I have wanted to.

The thing is, I don’t want to spend my relationship with you worrying about Kevin and Dirk. They have their own way, and I hope they are doing okay. But they also have those gleaming eyes and lots of guns. And that certainty. And they are incrementally, day by day, giving themselves permission to kill me in your name. I don’t think you are going to stop them with your great words and ideas, and I don’t have confidence you are going to come through their ceiling. So, this is problem I can’t ignore.

So, I guess, again, what I’m saying is, my heart breaks for the opportunity you handed all of us, and we failed you. We failed you. And that’s why my heart breaks. And my heart fears for what’s coming in your name.

I guess what I’m trying to say is please, please please roll the stone back. Please, Jesus. Roll the stone again.