Daily Word of Grace (April 1, 2020)

As a kid I loved April Fools Day.  All day long my friends and I would trick and prank each other, each time followed by an annoyingly loud, “April Fools!”  The Beatles’ 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour has an often overlooked gem of a song called “Fool on the Hill” about a fool “alone on a hill…keeping perfectly still”, a fool who is dismissed-“nobody wants to know him” because “they can see that he’s just a fool.”  And yet the fool in this song is actually a savant who knows what’s up, whose eyes “see the world spinning round.”  Christianity is often dismissed as foolish, Christians dismissed as fools, and Jesus Christ on Calvary dismissed as the ultimate Fool on the Hill.  And yet, scripture tells us, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are bring saved it is the power of God…God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom…(and) God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25, and 27).  On Good Friday Jesus became your Fool on the Hill.  He was mocked and rejected, and nobody wanted to know him because they could see he was just a fool.  And yet Jesus still gave his life for every fool in this foolish world spinning round, including you.  Moreover, this foolish love of God means you are fully forgiven for all the foolish things you have done, and ensures you the gift of eternal life…no fooling.