Resurrection Journey

Yesterday a friend in Atlanta emailed me that he had been given a book by a client of his who was the book’s author, Dr. Shan Alexander. The book is Resurrection Journey. It’s an imaginative day by day journal of Jesus' forty days between Easter and the Ascension, days which are not attested in the Bible. Counter to most people, I am religious but not spiritual!, and I was skeptical, my nature, but I told my friend I would look up the book, and I did so.

Finding it on Amazon.com, I downloaded it onto my Kindle and immediately began reading it, almost as though compelled. This is strange language, new reading territory, unfamiliar feelings for this modern day Thomas who is everything that the Easter evening Thomas was and worse.

The book I am finding fascinating, simply and beautifully written. Credible. Enjoyable. Stirring. A modern man named Jeremiah is being shown through those forty days by Peter himself, witnessing scene after familiar scene. Adopting it as my Lenten exercise, I have only read a bit of it so far. 

The effect may have to do with my age, or with surprising my reserve and reluctance to choke down anything unusual or paranormal, or with exchanges with friends who’ve recently lost loved ones, or with my ongoing emotion and state of mind that Kristen was in a car wreck and my almost debilitating relief that she was not hurt. Or it may simply be that it’s Lent and with the Cross in mind I needed something different that I’d never otherwise choose.

Friends know me as a true Thomas, deserving the name. Resurrection Journey is a simple read. But it stirs my love for The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis; reminds me of books I read over the years about NDEs, near death experiences; it’s even stirring memories of Narnia somehow, and a particularly moving scene involving Eustace with Caspian and the Lion. It could just be that I miss Narnia so much! No guarantees how it might touch anyone else, or even how the rest of it may turn out for me. And like those at the Pentecost event, I have had no wine; but the story is so real that page after page, it’s taking my breath away.

Tom+