Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Easter

 

Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 11.38.12 AMNight had smothered the city, and the city gave up its protest in uncountable millions of bubbles and gasps of light. Below was glittering Manhattan. The east was black. The opaque hilly horizon of the west was razor-edged against a last gleam of cold white light. Destroyers rode the unbridged Hudson; ferries and small craft flecked her with light. The East River lay her dark secretive self…a cool, lamp-spotted, many-bridged stream between the sprawling white conflagrations of Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was terrifyingly beautiful up on the roof, four hundred feet above the gaudy streets, four hundred feet up in the cool dark silences, four hundred feet up nearer the stars….

Mr. Blue put his hands into his trouser pockets and leaned backward, his face toward the heavens, now filling with stars.

“I think,” he whispered half to himself, “my heart would break with all this immensity if I did not know that God Himself once stood beneath it, a young man, as small as I.”

Then, he turned to me slowly.

“Did it ever occur to you that it was Christ Who humanized infinitude, so to speak? When God became man He made you and me and the rest of us pretty important people. He not only redeemed us. He saved us from the terrible burden of infinity.”

Blue rather caught me off my guard. I might have admitted in him a light turn for philosophy. I did not expect any such high-sounding speculation as this. But he was passionately serious. He eyes were glowing in the dark. He threw his hands up toward the stars: “My hands, my feet, my poor little brain, my eyes, my ears, all matter more than the whole sweep of these constellations!” he burst out. “God Himself, the God to Whom this whole universe-specked display is as nothing, God Himself had hands like mine and feet like mine, and eyes, and brain, and ears!….” He looked at me intently. “Without Christ we would be little more than bacteria breeding on a pebble in space, or glints of ideas in a whirling void of abstractions. Because of Him, I can stand here out under this cold immensity and know that my infinitesimal pulse-beats and acts and thoughts are of more importance than this whole show of a universe.”

–Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue, published in 1928

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  1. Flagg Taylor Member

    Wow. That’s really something. Just wow.

    • #1
    • April 4, 2015, at 9:25 PM PDT
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  2. Arahant Member

    Quite an interesting quote, Peter.

    • #2
    • April 4, 2015, at 9:26 PM PDT
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  3. Mike Rapkoch Moderator

    Happy Easter Peter.

    • #3
    • April 4, 2015, at 9:34 PM PDT
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  4. Peter Robinson Founder
    Peter Robinson

    Happy Easter to you all, too–and it really is something, Flagg, isn’t it? It still just knocks me off my feet, for the beauty and the power and the truth of it.

    • #4
    • April 4, 2015, at 9:42 PM PDT
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  5. Mike Rapkoch Moderator

    Peter Robinson:Happy Easter to you all, too–and it really is something, Flagg, isn’t it? It still just knocks me off my feet, for the beauty and the power and the truth of it.

    Consider it! Because of Him, because of that self-emptying love, we learn that there really is a center of the universe-us! What Glory. What responsibility. How can we even begin to understand? The infinite God regards his fallen people and raises us up to Himself. You have to believe it–because it is impossible. Here the philosopher’s tongue is all tied up.

    • #5
    • April 4, 2015, at 10:19 PM PDT
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  6. Aaron Miller Member
    Aaron MillerJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Wonderful, Peter. I bought that novel after the last time you quoted it, but have yet to read it.

    Happy Easter.

    • #6
    • April 4, 2015, at 10:37 PM PDT
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  7. Eustace C. Scrubb Member

    Thanks, Peter. Happy Easter to you and to all the good people of Ricochet!

    He is Risen!

    • #7
    • April 5, 2015, at 2:14 AM PDT
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  8. Merina Smith Inactive

    You win Claire’s Best Easter Literature contest! A joyous Easter to you, Peter.

    • #8
    • April 5, 2015, at 5:32 AM PDT
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  9. Jim Chase Member
    Jim ChaseJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Yes, and amen. Thank you, Peter.

    • #9
    • April 5, 2015, at 6:50 AM PDT
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  10. Stad Coolidge

    Happy Easter Peter, and thanks for the post!

    • #10
    • April 5, 2015, at 9:16 AM PDT
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  11. MJBubba Inactive

    Merina Smith:You win Claire’s Best Easter Literature contest! A joyous Easter to you, Peter.

    Everyone should check out that post, if for nothing else than the pictures of the art.

    • #11
    • April 5, 2015, at 3:51 PM PDT
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  12. Flagg Taylor Member

    Peter Robinson:Happy Easter to you all, too–and it really is something, Flagg, isn’t it? It still just knocks me off my feet, for the beauty and the power and the truth of it.

    Do you think highly of this novel as a whole?

    • #12
    • April 5, 2015, at 4:25 PM PDT
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  13. Copperfield Inactive

    Remarkable. I’ve been working so much lately, it seems it’s been months since I’ve visited this sanctuary. I’m here 15 minutes, read this, and my heart is full. Thank you, Peter, and thank you, Ricochet. This really is the best place on the internet and all of you make it so.

    • #13
    • April 5, 2015, at 5:53 PM PDT
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  14. Mountie Coolidge

    I went to Sunday service with my son this morning. His church, not mine. I heard a remark from the sermon this morning that I am still pondering: because of redemtion in Christ, right here, right now, is the closest that you will ever come to Hell. I’m giving this thought.

    • #14
    • April 5, 2015, at 6:02 PM PDT
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  15. Peter Robinson Founder
    Peter Robinson

    Flagg Taylor:

    Peter Robinson:Happy Easter to you all, too–and it really is something, Flagg, isn’t it? It still just knocks me off my feet, for the beauty and the power and the truth of it.

    Do you think highly of this novel as a whole?

    To be honest, I’m not sure it works as a novel–the plot isn’t entirely gripping, really. It’s more a book of moments and insights, but none the less worth reading for that.

    • #15
    • April 5, 2015, at 6:34 PM PDT
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  16. Flagg Taylor Member

    “Love moves us to sacrifice at a least a considerable measure of dignity and rank in the interest of elevating the other: parents clown with children; philosophers return to the cave; God descends to man. And in that descent, love finds its own excellence and higher nobility.”

    Carey McWilliams wrote that–a great political thinker and teacher who passed away a decade ago. Read more here.

    • #16
    • April 5, 2015, at 8:32 PM PDT
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  17. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member

    My pastor said something amazing yesterday in his Easter sermon, describing Jesus hanging on the cross. “He isn’t running from Death. He is chasing Death down.”

    For you and for me, the Eternal One chased down Death. He dragged Death kicking and screaming into the grave with Him. And then He rose, walked out of that grave, and left Death behind.

    Hallelujah and Happy Easter.

    • #17
    • April 6, 2015, at 11:22 AM PDT
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