Caution: Full Speed Ahead

Good Friday today, which got me thinking about how


"He was wounded for our trangressions, bruised for our iniquities. The punishment for our peace was put on Him, and by His stripes we were healed."

I watched the Passion of the Christ with Audrey yesterday, and it was pretty good : ) It was very graphic and brought the events of 2000 years ago into the context of here and now. I almost felt like one of the crowds following Christ as he was put to death on the cross. Each lash of the whip was depicted in excruciating detail, which made this verse run through everyone's heads: By His stripes we are healed.

Some parts were too terrible for me to watch, but the middle-aged lady beside me took it all in with shakes of her head. It would have been rather amusing actually were I not so affected by the film, to hear her going, "Haiyoh! Tsk tsk tsk." whenever the soldiers whipped Jesus, shaking her head vigourously, as though with her stern Singaporean-auntie disapproval she could cow the soldiers into putting down their whips in meek submission.

I used to pray this strange prayer when I was a kid: I prayed that I would be allowed to see Jesus being crucified. I used to think that if I had been there, at the foot of the cross, my faith would have been all the more real. In a way, I guess my prayer has been answered.

I've been having trouble sleeping o' nights, because I've been imagining all sorts of strange things. I keep thinking that my KLM flight back is going to crash, and imagining how Audrey and I, with our orange life-jackets, will plummet into the sea; or thinking that there will be a bomb in Amsterdam when my flight gets there, or that Singapore will be bombed by terrorists, or that another World War will break out and I will be thrown into prison and whipped. It's no use telling me that all these imaginings make no sense because I know they don't. In the light of day everything seems silly, but at night in the half-stillness fantasies seem to become so real and sleep seems all the more terrible because I don't know what manner and shape of things will come at me in the half-darkness.

I wonder whether people go mad this way, but there; I won't think about it now.

Got an email from Katie : ) She might fly down in the summer for a visit. It'll be wonderful if she does. I'm already thinking of all the things we could do, and if I really do go down to Newcastle to stay with Gemma as well, it looks set to be a really exciting summer!

Better try to get some sleep now!