April Fools

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Did you play a prank on someone today?  I didn't.  Not because I don't think it would be fun, but mostly because I am not that imaginative.  Do people do that anymore on April Fools Day?

I started wondering about where this tradition came from, but I found that the various ideas about its origins are too many and too elaborate to detail here.  Suffice it to say that a number of them had to do with making fun of, or a fool, out of someone.

My two contemporary favorites, which I found on history.com are these:

"In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich."

Aren't those funny?  And pretty harmless, too.  But I think the best one I read about goes like this:

"In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees." 

I almost can't stop laughing!  I guess those who believed that one were probably the same people that got a paper fish pinned to their back to signal how gullible they were! 

My point is, never assume that Christians have fallen for an elaborate prank because of their belief in Jesus. Jesus was a real person, who walked this earth.  Over 2,000 years of history attests to this, not to mention the people who knew him and wrote about him and witnessed his miracles.

So I would say, today, don't be a fool and fall for the false notion that Jesus was just a nice guy who lived for a time and preached well.  He was 100% human and 100% divine and he lived and died for each one of us.

Look into it.  You will surely discover that belief in Christ is not for the gullible, the faint of heart, nor the fool.

Janet Cassidy
janetcassidy.blogspot.com

 

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