British novelist and playwright David Lodge was attending a performance of one of his creations, a satirical review, on the evening of November 23, 1963. The script called for an actor to show up for a job interview with a transistor radio clutched to his ear, showing his character?s complete indifference to the job he was applying for. The actor then sat down the radio and turned it to a station to let its news, music, or commercials play in the background as the play went on This night, however, a voice came on the radio with a live news bulletin: ?Today, the American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas...? The audience gasped and the actor immediately switched off the radio but it was too late

British novelist and playwright David Lodge was attending a performance of one of his creations, a satirical review, on the evening of November 23, 1963. The script called for an actor to show up for a job interview with a transistor radio clutched to his ear, showing his character?s complete indifference to the job he was applying for. The actor then sat down the radio and turned it to a station to let its news, music, or commercials play in the background as the play went on This night, however, a voice came on the radio with a live news bulletin: ?Today, the American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas...? The audience gasped and the actor immediately switched off the radio but it was too late. In one sentence the reality of the outside world had shattered the fictional world of the theatre. Suddenly whatever took place onstage seemed irrelevant to the importance of the day?s events.
It seems that real life often imitates the events that took place in that theatre over 40 years ago. We cruise along experiencing the events of the day when something jars us back into something. Assassinations, a friend getting cancer, towers collapsing in Manhattan have the effect of forcing me to evaluate my priorities. The reality is that I live in two different worlds at the same time. One is physical and temporary, the other spiritual and eternal. Often it is easy to lose sight of the spiritual while living in the physical. Still reality often draws us back to our spiritual need.
Year after year statistics show that more people attend church on Easter Sunday than any other Sunday of the year. It is the one day of the year when even for a little while, the most important event of history take precedence over our everyday concerns. The brutal death and resurrection of Jesus should shock us out of our attraction to the physical world and place our focus on the eternal.

I think that we often lose sight of the importance of spiritual things because the physical world bombards us with signals that are sensual and enticing. Frequently the spiritual world seems quiet and invisible. The physical word is all around me while I feel like I have to fight my way into the spiritual realm. Finding the right balance is a constant struggle. We can?t deny the physical world: God placed us here for a reason.
CS. Lewis, who died the same day as John F. Kennedy, delivered a sermon in Oxford entitled ?Learning in Wartime? as England was bracing for a prolonged war with Nazi Germany. He addressed a question that must have troubled all the students at Oxford in those days: How could they be expected to concentrate on subjects like classical Greek and mathematics and medieval literature when the country and the world was facing such a crisis? ?Is it not like fiddling while Rome burns??? Lewis reminded the students that a crisis such as war merely aggravates the situation in which we find ourselves. For of course none of us knows when life will come to a sudden end; war merely increases the
immediate odds. The question is not whether literature is worth studying during wartime but whether literature is
worth studying at all, The wise person lives in awareness of time and eternity, a dual citizen of both heaven and
earth. Our celebration of Jesus resurrection at Easter brings both worlds into clear focus, As we look at the resurrection, we see the critical importance of having our eternal destiny secured and we also see that the Jesus who died for us also died for everyone including the people that we meet every day as we walk and talk. They are the
intersection between the physical and the spiritual worlds that we live in. Our
call is to celebrate Jesus and take Him
to others in the real world we live in.

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Published on: 2006-04-11 (4938 reads)