Alen E. Lewis

How many of us would ever explore the dark extremities of our own humanity were we not from time to time thrown into them involuntarily? 'Necessity is laid upon me,' wrote the apostle Paul; and mostly it is only of necessity, through the inescapability of life's misfortunes, and not in free discipleship or loving service, that we enter into solidarity with those who suffer and die, often in despair and hope. One there was who set his face toward Jerusalem, a shepherd who of his own accord laid down his life for sheep. For the rest of us, not as volunteers but conscripts, not in freedom but in the chains of accident or sickness, do we make our Easter Saturday graves with the wretched or the wicked.