Happy Easter!!

"Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do!"

- Gospel of Luke 23:34

Often its the simplest of solutions that one finds the hardest to discover. Its those that are most obvious, but have a profound impact, which seem to be lost in on our mortal eyes. In times when the simplicity of love can heal, one often heads to the complexities of hate and division. As the world heads forth to yet another Easter weekend, and there have been atleast a couple of thousand of them already, I wonder if I and a great many like me, have acctually grasped the amazingly simple love that Christ exemplified on the Cross. Atop the mountain called Golgotha, He potrayed not just a sacrifice for those who were with Him, but an unqualified and unbelieveable love for those who had wronged Him. He gave himself not just for those who were devoted to Him but He went out looking for those who devovered Him.

In our present times, when relationships - both at an individual & societal level are strained; bonds that are streched and love that has gone stale; it is necessary we seek that simplicity of love that we saw on the cross. Our world has become complex with each of us grading people and their actions - good, bad, ugly, malicious, deplorable etc etc. Some people are seemingly deserving and the others being no qualified partakers of our love. Why have we conditionalized ourselves and our emtions so much? Ware there so many barriers to reach out to someone's heart and touch them with warmth??

'Love' is a word that can conjugate a different meaning for every different person. Its never been adequately defined, nor shall it ever !! For defining it is like the story of the blind who decide to describe what is an elephant like - each calling it what he has experienced it like; while each of them is correct in their own way, none of them are complete. Such is the case with Love - it can never fully fit into our finite minds. Our minds always seek to break things down to logic so that our small minds can take them in... but such is the infinity of love - that it shall never be fully comphrehended by anyone. There again, though no one fully comphrehends love, love in itself encompasses everyone - people, situations and emotions.

There is nothing love cannot solve nor anything that love cannot heal. But to do so, it must be allowed; it must be employed by us as a means to touch people's lives. Where fear divides and hatred hurts; love can build, restore and create an atmosphere for relationships to blossom. While hatred and uneasiness leave us as despicable & desolate men, love allows us the humanity & humility to co-habit in togetherness.

Christ spoke seven different things on the cross He was crucified, but just as He lived through His life, His heart first went out to those who were 'wrong'. He preached all his life about caring and loving those who have fallen out of favor with us, who no more figure in our 'special' list... those who you would rather do away with, those who hurt you and grieved you - malicious or otherwise! He saw a need in them to be restored.

Deep within, everyone has a desperate need of acceptance - irrespective of one actions & disposition. Similar must have been the case with those soldiers who meted out the most sereve and brutal punishments of the Roman times - to a man who was hardly deserving of it. I am sure in their individual lives they must have sought acceptance and love - found it a few times and not on other occassions... and yet to get it from the man whom they were crucifying must have been something they must have least expected. I surely trust that love must have stirred their hearts, if not in the commotion of that crucifixtion but in the solitude of its aftermath.

Being crucified was not a punishment just for the physical being of a person, it was to be a torture of unforeseen proportions. It was not just meant to kill but to put the person to the ultimate shame, to brutally hurt both the physical and mental person - all at the same time. While undergoing such monumental punishment Christ exemplified for us the Love which the world really needs. With every wrong that happens to us, we tend to fall backwards in the amount of love we give. With every situation thats against us, we retreat a few steps away from loving others. Bitterness fills our hearts as we walk our lives full of misery and discomfort, and yet it was never the lesson which Christ intended to leave with us. All He lived for was Love, all He died for was Love! So Love is ultimate message of Easter... spread it and live it!!