The Rapture, overly simplified, is when Jesus comes and takes his followers away, and to according to pastor Harold Camping, it was supposed to be today.

Of course, he also predicted it to happen 1994, and he’s not the only one to make a claim like this. The year 2000 was a pretty big deal for Rapture-watchers, what with all the hype over Y2K. In 1988, there was a now-infamous book entitled “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988″. Going back further, it seems there hasn’t been a century since the resurrection of Jesus when someone hasn’t made a claim to a specific date of his return.

It goes without saying that they were all wrong, and while I have no record of this, I have no doubt that they were all laughed at as well.

I am not laughing at Harold Camping, and I have no desire to judge him. All right, I have some desire to judge him… but God instructed me, and all Christians, not to. God’s instruction is to “Love your neighbor”, and he is my neighbor.

Here’s what else I know:

• I’m supposed to keep watch for when Jesus does come.
• No one knows the day or hour that will happen.
• For my life on this earth, I am supposed to live like Jesus would want. (I’m still working on that one.)
• I’m supposed to avoid false prophecy.

Those things, I believe, would be good for everyone to remember. After all, December 2012 is just around the corner. If Jesus doesn’t come before then, you know there will be more than a few people expecting that he’s paying attention to the last days of the Mayan calendar, and this will start all over again.

You may have heard of me. My name comes up a lot this time of year, because over 2000 years ago, my wife, Mary, gave birth to a son, named Jesus. The celebration of his birth is called Christmas, and the story of how Jesus was born has been sometimes called “the first Christmas”. It’s a story that has been told and retold many times, and is a wonderful memory for me… but if I may, I’d like to tell you a different story this year.

It began about two months before Jesus’ second birthday. I was fixing the roof of our home in Bethlehem one night when we received a visit from a group of Persian scholars. They called themselves the Magi, and had come to Jerusalem a few days before looking for a baby who, they said, was to become “King of the Jews”.

Now, you have to realize that Jesus’ birth was very special, and I don’t mean that in a proud father sort of way. God himself caused Mary to have this child, and when he was born, his appearance was heralded by angels. Within weeks of his birth, two different prophets came to us, proclaiming that he would be a saviour of Israel.

Yet… he was still just a baby. He cried when he was hungry. He didn’t walk until he was over a year old. His diapers… let us not speak of his diapers. Some days, it was easy to forget just how important this baby seemed to be.

So, when the Magi showed up, it was like a breath of fresh air. They spoke of following the stars from the East to find this boy, surprising all of Jerusalem when they entered the city, proclaiming that a new king had been born. Herod, the current king, was especially surprised at this, but expressed interest at seeing the new king for himself. The Jews in Jerusalem informed the Magi that, if indeed a prophesied king had been born, it would be a few miles south in Bethlehem. With the help of a special star, they found us.

The Magi had come with gifts, and what gifts they were. We were given three intricately decorated boxes. The first and heaviest box was filled with gold, enough for our family to live on for many years, and the second box contained incense, a fragrance that reminded me very much of the temple in Jerusalem, but the third box contained a substance I was unfamiliar with. “It is called myrrh,” said the tallest of the Magi. “It is used for embalming. I believe this boy’s death will be very significant.”

The visit of the Magi was brief. The next night, after accepting our relatively humble gifts – some of Mary’s homemade bread and our best wine – they departed. Jesus, who had spent most of the day pulling on the long robes that our guests wore, was fast asleep, but Mary and I talked for hours after they left, trying to make sense of it all.

We had barely fallen asleep that evening when an angel woke us up. “Get up”, he said, “take Jesus and escape to Egypt. Herod is going to come soon to kill him.”

We packed as fast as we could. Clothes, family treasures, and of course Jesus’ new gifts were placed in the cart. Mary woke up Jesus, and I woke up the donkey; neither of them were particularly happy about being up so late at night. We fled Bethlehem.

The journey to Egypt was rough. The Sinai desert provided very little food or water, and the nights were cold, but still we fled. We slept in caves when we could find them. Mary took care of Jesus as best she could, but the constant travelling and filthy conditions were tough on her. Fortunately, baby Jesus was quiet ticklish, and putting a smile on his face was often enough to make her smile, too. It was a few weeks before we entered Egypt and saw our first glimpses of the Nile. With some of our gold, we purchased a small home, not knowing how long we would be living here.

It was in this foreign land, the land that our forefathers were enslaved many generations ago, that Jesus turned two years old. A birthday is supposed to be a happy time, but I found it difficult to celebrate. Mary had baked Jesus a cake of figs and other fruits, which he was devouring happily, when I stepped outside to watch the sun go down.

To be honest, I was frustrated at God. “Really?” I cried out to him. “This was your plan? You bring the next king of Israel into the world, only to have him live in Egypt to escape being murdered? How am I supposed to deal with this? How am I supposed to make a life for him here? I still don’t even understand how to be a father to him! How can I possibly be the right person to take care of your son?”

“Joseph?”

I turned around. Mary was standing in the doorway. “Are you okay?” she asked. I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to answer.

Mary handed me a small scroll. “What’s this?” I asked.

“A poem,” she replied. “Years ago, when the angel came to me and said I was to give birth to the son of God… I didn’t know what to think. As you know, I went away to visit Elizabeth, who was also about to give birth, and I spent a lot of time praying. During my prayer one evening, something very comforting came over me, and I wrote this.”

I took the scroll from Mary’s hand and began to read:

My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed
for the Mighty One has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.

For the first time since leaving Israel, I felt peaceful. I kissed Mary, gave back her scroll, and then re-entered our new home. I opened the box of incense that we’d been given by the Magi, and breathed in deeply, the aroma reminding me of Israel. I felt new hope that someday we would return.

Beside me, I heard the sound of someone else breathing in deeply. I turned to see Jesus catching a whiff of incense. Then he looked at me with a big grin on his sticky face covered with cake crumbs.

I closed my eyes and bowed my head. “God, I don’t know how all of this fits in your plans, but I’m thankful to be part of them. You have done great things for me. Holy is your name.”

I opened my eyes, looked back at my boy, and smiled. “Happy birthday, Jesus.”

Christmas is certainly easier to wrap your head around… “a baby is born that will save the world”. That’s nice. Isn’t that nice? Almost superheroic, really. Let’s add to that stuff like “people gave him expensive gifts to celebrate his birth”. Oh, that’s even better! That gives me a way to celebrate! I’ll give gifts! I’ll get gifts! Christmas is the best time of the year!

Easter. That’s a lot tougher to celebrate. The baby that was born grows into a man named Jesus, is convicted of crimes, killed, but then rises from the dead within a few days informing people that he’s actually the Son of God. The details of his death are gruesome, and the details of his resurrection are, to most people, unbelievable.

How exactly are we supposed to turn something like Easter into foil-covered chocolates or wrapping paper? I’ve seen Biblical wrapping paper at Christmastime, with nativity scenes and angels and shepherds, but never Easter. An empty tomb, a crucified man, God having a victory over demonic forces… all of it is very difficult to commercialize, and so we celebrate it with bunnies and chicks and eggs and a host of odd symbols based on ancient Babylonian customs that don’t make sense to us. But, in doing so, we are forced to ignore this:

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

If Jesus was just a nice guy who said a few nice things and died in a horrible way, then everything changes. All Christians become lunatics, and all people of this earth lose the one true source of hope, freedom, and a relationship with God.

But, if it did happen, and Jesus did die to cover everything that you did wrong before rising from the dead and conquering death… well, then you have a choice, don’t you? Do you accept the gift? Do you want to be saved?

Many of the people I know don’t want to answer yes or no to that question… they’d rather just avoid the question entirely, and get on with their lives. I imagine that this is probably why we still have the Easter Bunny… it’s a lot easier to believe that we get a few days off work to celebrate a rabbit than having to answer that question that the annoying Christians keep asking: Do you want to know Jesus?

I won’t ask you that question. All I can say is that it’s been well worth it for me.

Happy Easter!

Estimated time spent: 4-4.5 hours.
Medium: Rough pencil sketch first, then a vector drawing in Flash, and finally the shading and background done in Photoshop. Photoshop’s great for shading, but I can never get the clean lines with it that Flash is so good at creating. I just wish there was an easy way to export a Flash file with layers as a Photoshop file with those same layers, I’d love to know it… the only way I’ve figured out how to do it is pretty tedious.

“For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.”

Upon reading this, I was hit with the strangest thought – Christians are human brussels sprouts.

You know about brussels sprouts, right? They have this certain chemical inside of them that certain people can taste and other people can’t, and this is one of the reasons why some people find that they taste horribly bitter, while others don’t find that true at all (and, in fact, will even say they taste sweet sometimes).

Now, I don’t have a sense of smell – that’s a topic for another day – so whenever I hear about “aroma”, that’s pretty much the closest thing I can relate it to, and when the verses I was reading talked about the same aroma being fragrant or deathly to different people, it clicked with me. As a Christian, I have a message that I’m supposed to tell the whole world. It’s a message of extreme importance, and it has saved my life. And yet, to many people, that same message reeks.

I don’t really know how to deal with that yet. I’m sure I talk about Christianity proportionally more on this site than I do in real life. I want to show people my faith properly, and this is the best way I know how to do it… giving any reader the freedom to walk away from what I’m saying at any time. But, if the message of the Gospel really is the most important message in the world, shouldn’t I be telling everyone about it, no matter how much it reeks for them?

I don’t know. All I know is that sometimes, people learn to like brussels sprouts.

Well, if you like those, here’s some for you to try. They’re all fairly well known Christmas Carols:

1. Oak Wrist Mystery
2. Sigh Land In Height
3. Rude Olive Their Head Knows Rained Ear
4. Caw Dressed Deem Air Reach End Almond
5. A Wayne Aim May Injure
6. Lid Dolled Rum Herb Poi
7. Sill Verb Else
8. Far Oz Teethe Is No Man
9. Joint Tooth How Hurled
10. Fall Lease Snuff Eat Add
11. It Cay Map Pawn Amid Nigh Tickle Ear
12. Oak A Mocha Me Manual
13. Could Keen Gwen Senseless
14. Owe Calm Mall Leaf Hateful

Answers:

1. Oh Christmas Tree
2. Silent Night
3. Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer
4. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
5. Away In A Manger
6. Little Drummer Boy
7. Silver Bells
8. Frosty The Snowman
9. Joy To The World
10. Feliz Navidad
11. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
12. Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel
13. Good King Wenceslas
14. O Come All Ye Faithful

Commentary: Right when I was finishing production on this, I decided that it wouldn’t quite be complete without a Bible verse or two at the end, so I went searching through my Bible and found John 15:12,13.

They are verses I have read very frequently, but I read them in a new way this time. Until then, I had always read the phrase “lay down his life for his friends” in the sense that there is no greater love you can have than to be willing to die for them. While that’s true, there’s another way to interpret the phrase.

If your life consists of what you do from day to day and the priorities you’ve made, wouldn’t ignoring what you want to do and thinking of others be a way of laying down your life? In other words, if you set aside what you really want to do today and affect other people’s lives, aren’t you laying down your own life?

Commentary:

This was the most difficult Il Soapbox to create out of all of them to this point. Believe it or not, I started this about two years before I finished it.

There were several reasons for this. One reason was the Star Wars effect. There are still enough people in the world who are Star Wars fans to the point that Jedi is their religion. If they catch wind of all these comparisons between God and Darth Vader… well, let’s just say I didn’t want responsibility for somehow creating a new cult.

However, the bigger problem was that I had worked myself into a corner. I had posed to myself a question that I found I couldn’t answer. Why should I trust something that has been so misused by others?

I mean, this is the Bible for crying out loud! I’ve been studying this thing since I knew how to read! I’ve based my life around my faith in God, with the Bible as a steady guide, and then I find a reason to question it that could destroy that to dust. Needless to say, it was unsettling.

So, I let it go for awhile, occasionally asking God about it, but never really getting any closure, until the example of the world leader’s speech came to mind, and it hit me… just because any piece of literature or information can be used improperly doesn’t make the original any less valid. Just because someone has a map upside-down while they’re finding directions doesn’t mean the map is faulty.