Yes!

"After the final no, there comes a yes,

And on that yes, the future of the world depends."

These words were penned by the great American modernist poet Wallace Stevens in the year 1942 as collection of poems first published under the title; "The Well Dressed Man With a Beard".  The story of how Stevens became a poet is worth a blog post unto itself, as he didn't first start to write poetry until his forties, after being educated at Harvard as a lawyer, and working as an insurance company executive for the early part of his career.  And the rest of the poem by Stevens is equally prophetic and poignant:

No was the night.  Yes is this present sun.

If the rejected things, the things denied,

Slide over the western cataract, yet one,

One only, one thing that was firm, even

No greater than a cricket's horn, no more

Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech

Of the self the trust sustain itself on speech,

One thing remaining, infallible, would be

Enough...

If I could write poetry like that, I would quit my day job too!

However, since it is less than two weeks until Easter, Stevens' words have been echoing in my ear as the best definition of Easter, the resurrection of Jesus, a description of the life of Jesus that I can come up with.

I just put my 1.5 year old son Ewan down for his morning nap.  He has been struggling all morning with a bit of a cold, as his little nose drips like a faucet which runs into his mouth.  He has been tripping over things, a little cranky, a little agitated - poor little guy.  It has been a morning of "no's".  "No, don't draw on the table."  "No, don't hit the dog."  "No, don't throw the remote controls."  And so, I decided to just put him down for an early nap.  As I tucked Ewan into his crib with a warm bottle, and his snuggly blanket, you could sense excitement from him as he hunkered down for a "long winter's nap."  It was the comforting "Yes" after a morning of "No's".

"After the final no, there comes a yes,

And on that yes the future of the world depends."

Some of my best friends are not Christian.  When I speak with them, they often tell me that the whole Bible is just one long series of "Do's and Don'ts".  When they say this they point out all of the Old Testament passages that delineate rules and regulations from the ancient world (the Ten Commandments, the Levitical Codes, the ways that God cracks down on early people like Noah's friends).  With this line of thinking I can never really offer a countervailing argument.  They are right, there are a lot of "No's" in the Bible.  But then there comes a great and wonderful "Yes", in the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was the ultimate Yes.  His life was an affirmation of the intrinsic value of humanity, and God's love for it, God's desire to save it.  The kinds of things Jesus said were mostly Yeses.  Jesus' most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, can be thought of as one big long string of Yeses.  The "Blessed Are's" can all be turned into "Yes to's":

"Yes to the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Yes to those who mourn,

for they will be comforted."

"Yes to the meek,

For they will inherit the earth."

And, of course, Jesus said some "no's", but they were always said in love.  To the woman caught in adultery, Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn thee (YES), go and sin no more," (John 8:11).

And Jesus is the yes that comes after centuries of definitive "no's".  Early civilizations, from the Egyptians to the Persians to the Phoenicians to the Greeks, all offered the world a handful of lasting contributions, and yet most of their cultures were defined...

Wait, I think I hear Ewan waking up from his nap....

Will this be a moment for No or Yes?

Who knows?

All For Now,

GB