There! How Was That?

There! How Was That?

A couple of F-15’s are escorting a C-130 Hercules, and their pilots are chatting with the pilot of the transport to pass the time. Talk comes around to the relative merits of their respective aircraft. The fighter pilots contend that their airplanes were better because of their superior speed, maneuverability, weaponry, and so forth, and pointed out the Hercules deficiencies in these areas. After taking this for a while, the C-130 pilot says, "Oh yeah? Well, I can do a few things in this old girl that you’d only dream about." Naturally, the fighter pilots challenge him to demonstrate. "Just watch," comes the quick retort. And so they watch. But all they see is that C-130 continue to fly straight and level…After several minutes the Hercules pilot comes back on the air, "There! How was that?" The fighter pilots reply, "What are you talking about? What did you do?" And the Hercules pilot replies, "Well, I got up, stretched my legs, and got a cup of coffee."

Similarly, many of us don’t really recognize what God has done in the Easter story. We’ve got hi-tech toys, with great graphics and things that the generations before us could only dream of. And the simple 2,000-year-old Easter story comes along, and it feels like a great old C-130 Hercules. We figure, "It’s old and so what can it do?" We search the Internet, and we think we’ve got Christianity nailed down. I mean look at the colossal failures of Christians through the centuries, and they are numerous. But through the centuries and even with modern hi-tech sophistication and our evolved sensibilities, no one can explain away the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Christ comes to us, sneaking into our consciousness, and somehow we hear a voice in that Easter story: "There! How was that?"