Special Easter edition

Special Edition (Yesterday's column from the Eunice News for Easter)

I’m assuming as I write this that the sun came up today. If not, cancel you’re reading plans immediately. If so, read on.

This should tell you all you need to know about the world we live in: The Duck Dynasty stars want more money. They’ve already cornered the market on getting paid tons for being hilariously dumb, and they want more. My grandson, who loves the show, said, “Don’t they have enough already?” Knowing they are Christians in the first place, I wonder myself.

But I digress.

I’m currently in a life-saving mood. I’m attempting to walk and diet my way to a, uh, better me. I’m attempting to lose almost 70 pounds before I go on a 10-day jaunt to Israel in 2014. Making this public, I deem to be wise, will help my discipline. Of course, it was my lack of discipline that got me where I am in the first place. I read today that eating a handful of tree nuts (your basic walnuts, almonds, pecans, etc.) can help you maintain your BMI (which I found is not a car).

The list of good things these nuts can do for you is nigh on endless. They have higher levels of HDL cholesterol and lower levels of C-reactive protein. And …AND they reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes while lowering the prevalence of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and high blood sugar levels. Says nothing about re-growing hair, but you can’t have everything.

Who knew?

I say all that to say that as I near a milestone in age (not 50 and not 70 but somewhere exactly in-between), it occurs to me I should do what I can to increase the length of my life and that I should do what I can to increase the abundance and quality of that life.

I’m assuming that makes sense to all who have gotten this far who aren’t normally readers of this piece.

So, here’s my argument if everyone agrees that the idea is to be thin not for beauty but for quality of life, who agrees that walking though unpleasant is better than lying around, who seeks a life that includes as many sunrises as is possible. What I’ve just described is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

He came not to judge. He came not to condemn. He’s fully capable of doing both, but he chose not only to not do those things while here but to give us a plan that would enable us to choose quality of life and more sunrises than one can imagine.

He came to make sure that would happen not by being our fitness coach, not necessarily being our life coach but literally doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Imagine all those persons on Biggest Loser sitting around all the time and the trainers doing all the work for them. Would they lose the equivalent of the weight of North America if that happened? Yet Jesus died for us when our deaths would have no meaning, became sin so that we could be washed clean, became the unblemished lamb to atone for our mistakes.

Friends, I have no real idea if I’ll ever see my weight goal. I have no idea if I will live a day past reaching it if I do. I have no idea how boring lettuce will become or how nutty my life might turn into. But this I know, and like the apostle Peter I give it to you today.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God; he, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood. (Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Robert Robinson)

That’s what today is about. No candy I can’t eat. No bunnies I wouldn’t. But his rising again from the biggest pit imaginable: the tomb.

It’s like this: I will live until I don’t. I have the choice on what that life will look like. Everyone has that same choice on where we will spend eternity.

Walk out of the tomb, friends, into the light of another Sonrise.