The Tribune

By Rev Canon S Sebastian Campbell

It pays to remember that every Sunday is a "Little Easter", since every Sunday is a "feast of the Resurrection." From New Testament times Sunday has replaced Saturday as a day of worship; it was on a Sunday that our new life in Christ begun.

The good news of Easter is found in its contradiction: death is the passage to life. Early believers ventured into the cemetery in search of life. What a contradiction!

But it is precisely in our contradictions we can experience new life and share the good news. Where do we seek resurrection/new life this Easter? Let us dare venture into 10 cemeteries:

1. In the case of Pre-teen and teen pregnancy, that society would exact justice from those older men who are guilty of such grave an offence. I suggest castration or at least corporal punishment.

2. That society gives hope to approximately 1,000 teenage girls "kicked out" of school annually because of pregnancy. We must not allow their indiscretion to short-circuit their formal education. The church must lead in keeping hope alive.

3. The many young males who stumble into gangster living. Can we preempt this? Question, how many of us sacrifice in making intentional sustained programmes/solutions available? How many men's groups are sponsoring a meaningful outreach for our boys? Can we?

4. Our men's groups should invest time, teach a trade, sponsor a uniform organisation, and impart marketable skills in a coordinated system to our boys.

5. Broken families. Do we invest in fellowship and spiritual currency to keep them together?

6. Divorce courts can be sidestepped or "hell holes" of marriage circumvented if unevenly yoked persons are honest with this reality before marriage, or can counsellors fearlessly steer lustful affairs or infatuated desperadoes away from the altar?

7. Those in squalor. Far too many Bahamians are living in conditions below human dignity, in the filth of slums. It's even more tragic in knowing that the slum is being born into our children and therefore results in many of our social problems. People act the way they are treated. Do we need to take more form the rich so as to rescue the poor?

8. The TV culture must be zapped. It's the baby sitter and the only spokesperson in many homes. We can breathe new life into communities by socialising and knowing one another if we talk, relate stories, play games together et cetera, while simultaneously giving the TV the occasional break.

9. Fatherless homes. Pray that more Bahamian mothers will give fathers, real fathers, fathers-in-residence to their children. Bahamians confuse sperm donors with fatherhood all too often.

10. Accepting responsibility. For government and its supporters, especially writers, to stop exonerating their shortcomings in light of the shortcomings of the former administration.

11. To lick illiteracy with an educational system that waits upon and pushes forward slow learners so as to guarantee every Bahamian is able to both read and write.

Resurrection must be real and practical; let's breathe life into the dead bones of society and our lives. Let us use this Easter season, which runs until Pentecost, to begin to experience a new joy and a renewal of life, daily bringing sense out of the contradictions life throws at us.

"He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I'm His own….. You ask me how I know He lives…. He lives within my heart!"

What a testimony!