{"id":3596,"date":"2024-04-23T07:55:21","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T11:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3596"},"modified":"2024-04-23T07:57:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T11:57:19","slug":"holy-punctuation-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/23\/holy-punctuation-marks\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Punctuation Marks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

Most people agree on the basic facts of Jesus\u2019 life. 

He lived in Judea during the opening decades of the first century.  He became known as a prophet, teacher, and miracle-worker.  He died on a cross by order of a Roman procurator.

There\u2019s not nearly as much consensus, however, about what happened next.  Did Jesus rise from the dead?  Or is the idea that he is still alive nothing more than (as one of my friends puts it) a \u201cfig newton of someone\u2019s imagination\u201d?

For more than a few people, it comes down to punctuation.  Which punctuation mark best describes the claim that Jesus\u2019 tomb was empty?

The original disciples were apparently convinced, following his crucifixion, that Jesus\u2019 life had ended in a period<\/strong>. 

End of sentence, end of story.  Even Yogi Berra, famous for declaring, \u201cIt ain\u2019t over \u2018til it\u2019s over,\u201d would have said, \u201cTrust me, this one is definitely over.\u201d There\u2019s no evidence that the first visitors to Jesus\u2019 fresh grave expected to find a living <\/em>person.

Maybe the real story is best told with a question mark<\/strong>, since the Easter accounts brim with questions.  The man who at first appears to be the cemetery groundskeeper asks, \u201cWho are you looking for?\u201d Angels ask, \u201cWhy do you seek the living among the dead?\u201d  To this day a great many people experience religion as a series of interesting but ultimately unanswerable questions.

The disciples, however, begin to hedge.  The period at the end of their sentence gradually morphs into three dots, which is known as an ellipsis<\/strong>.   It follows words and phrases like: \u201cHowever\u2026\u201d \u201cOn the other hand\u2026\u201d and the always-popular \u201cHmm\u2026\u201d

The disciples begin to entertain the possibility that maybe the story of Jesus isn\u2019t over after all.

For many people, the preferred punctuation for Easter has become quotation marks.<\/strong>

It\u2019s currently fashionable to use \u201cquote marks\u201d to signal that we don\u2019t intend to be taken literally, but that we wish to speak tongue in cheek, \u201cif you know what I mean.\u201d   Thus moviegoers laugh when Austin Powers makes quotation marks with his fingers and shouts, \u201cFire \u2018the laser!\u2019\u201d 

If surveys are correct, about half of the Christian clergy who serve in the United States don\u2019t believe that Jesus really <\/em>came back to life.  The disciples probably experienced a \u201cresurrection\u201d of some sort, maybe a resurrection of their own hopes.  If you know what I mean.

Perhaps I\u2019m willing to bet my life that Jesus is alive right now, but I\u2019d like to put an asterisk<\/strong> by that statement. It all depends on what part of my life you\u2019re talking about.

I might bet my spiritual life on Jesus. But I really don\u2019t want Somebody interfering with my sex life. Or the way I report my taxes. Or the information I include on my resume.  Jesus may be OK.  But only to a point.

If you want to get cynical, we could always go with the Dollar Sign. <\/strong>There\u2019s got to be a catch. Somebody\u2019s getting rich from all of this, or they wouldn\u2019t keep floating such a crazy story.

Or how about Hashtag (#)? <\/strong>The hashtag is a way of tracking topics on social media platforms, whereby you can help people who are interested in your subject matter locate your comments and posts. Thus we have #WhoMovedTheStone, #DoubtingThomas, and #I\u2019mOpenToAnyReligionThatIncludesChocolateEggs.

Others believe the story is probably significant, but they enclose it with parentheses.<\/strong>  In other words, the resurrection might really have happened (but it happened a long, long time ago). 

God did something wonderful (but that was then and this is now).  According to this perspective Easter ends up being a history lesson (rather than a word for today).

Dr. Gary Habermas is one of the world\u2019s most respected teachers on the subject of the resurrection. He\u2019s authored 14 books on the subject.  The greatest challenge of his adult life, however, was the day that he and his wife Debbie went to the doctor to inquire about the pains she felt in her stomach. He\u2019ll never forget the doctor\u2019s words: \u201cWe have some big problems here.\u201d 

Four months later, at age 43, Debbie had died of cancer, leaving Gary to raise their four children and to struggle with a truckload of anguishing questions.

For Gary Habermas, the resurrection was transformed from a theological subject about which he had written a stack of books to his only real grounds for hope.

\u201cLosing my wife,\u201d he says, \u201cis the most painful experience I\u2019ve ever had to face\u2026but I can\u2019t get around the fact that the resurrection is the answer for her suffering.  If there\u2019s a resurrection, there\u2019s a heaven.  If Jesus was raised, Debbie was raised.  And I will be someday, too.  Then I\u2019ll see them both.\u201d 

For any of us who have struggled with the loss of someone we love, the empty tomb is more than just an obscure question or an historical footnote.

It\u2019s all we\u2019ve got<\/em>.

So what\u2019s the best punctuation mark for the last chapter of the life of Jesus?

The Bible suggests it ought to be an exclamation point.<\/strong>

Which would undoubtedly be, in the context of this broken world that continues to break our hearts, the best possible finale to our own lives as well.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Most people agree on the basic facts of Jesus\u2019 life.  He lived in Judea during the opening decades of the first century.  He became known as a prophet, teacher, and miracle-worker.  He died on a cross by order of a Roman procurator. There\u2019s not nearly as much consensus, however, about what… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[718,207],"class_list":["post-3596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-punctuation","tag-resurrection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3596"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3600,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions\/3600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}