As far as stories go, this one’s a page-turner from the start.  You know the kind.  It’s one of those stories that, as a child, had you huddled under your sheets at one in the morning with a flashlight.  It’s a story that, as an adult, has you furiously flipping pages at every red light on the way to pick up your kids in carpool. 

It begins with a young girl named Mary who is engaged to be married.  Well, the story really starts long before this girl, but we don’t have time to go into the whole snake in the garden, burning bush, parting sea, ark filled with animals shebang.  That part of the story is in book one or, as most folks like to call it, the Old Testament.  This story starts with Mary, the girl who is engaged. 

So Mary’s out minding her own business one day, probably thinking about whether or not she wants to serve shrimp cocktail in the buffet line at her reception when, out of the blue, this guy named Gabriel pays her a visit.  Now, Gabe isn’t just any old fellow.  The dude’s got wings.  And a halo.  And get this, Gabriel tells Mary that although she’s a virgin, she’s pregnant with God’s son. 

A virgin . . . pregnant?   Wait a minute.  The story is only a few pages in and already it’s getting interesting.  Chapter 1 has sex-ed teachers all over the world wondering why they’ve been demonstrating the condom roll-down move on cucumbers while thirteen-year-old boys giggle in the back of the classroom.   Mary’s never even seen a cucumber, and . . . she’s pregnant?  Whoa.

You’re already hooked at this point, aren’t you?  I mean, it’s no Fifty Shades of Grey, but you’re intrigued in a completely non-erotic  way.  (Just for planning purposes, there is no erotica in this story so if you’re sitting by the pool, you can keep reading, and if you haven’t read Fifty Shades yet, buy it immediately but don’t go anywhere near the pool while reading it.  Stay in your bedroom, preferably with your husband very close by.)

Okay, so Mary’s pregnant with God’s son, according to the guy with wings and a halo.  But wait . . . it gets better.  Gabriel doesn’t just tell Mary she’s going to have a baby and she’s not allowed to come up with his name – it has to be Jesus - he also tells her, and this part’s flat out funny, that her fiancé is going to be okay with it.  Are you kidding me? 

Now skip ahead a bit.  Mary and her fiancé (yep, ole’ Gabe was right – he stuck around to watch his virgin bride give birth) are heading to Joseph’s hometown to be counted for a census.  They’re travelling by donkey.  Doesn’t that sound like a good time?  My king size bed with a pillow top mattress and silk sheets was uncomfortable when I was eight months pregnant.  I’m thinking a ride on the back of a donkey couldn’t have been a real treat for Mary, but hey, I’ve never ridden a donkey.  So they get to town and need a place to stay, and since this story takes place long before travelocity.com was up and running, Mary and Joseph go door to door asking for shelter.  The plot thickens a bit here folks, and you can’t help but wonder if there’s a bit of literary irony going on when the couple is repeatedly turned down by the townspeople.  Clearly, there’s a need for someone to teach these people the whole “love your neighbor as yourself” lesson. 

So, what do Mary and Joseph do?  They find shelter in a barn, with hay on the floor and, I imagine, some fairly large spiders in the corners.  And in that barn, without a nurse or a doctor or, heaven help the poor woman, an epidural, the virgin named Mary gives birth to a baby boy, just as Gabriel told her she would.  She named him Jesus, as instructed.    

I’m not sure about you, but I’m pretty sure who the heroine in the story is so far.

Well, baby Jesus is quite a draw, and not simply because he was born in a stable in Bethlehem to a virgin with no royal pedigree whatsoever.   This baby, this Jesus, has followers immediately.  Granted, the followers hang out with sheep all day and track stars at night, but they are followers nonetheless.  If the story was about a rock band, they would be called ‘groupies,’ and who wouldn’t like to have a few of those.  Anyway, these followers come from afar to bring Jesus a Baby Einstein CD, a monogrammed silver cup, and a diaper genie.  Okay, okay, I know that’s not exactly how the story goes, but I’m guessing the gold, frankincense, and myrrh made up quite a care package back in those days.   Either way, the important plot line here is that Jesus was so important a new star began shining in the sky to direct people to him, and the people that came treated him like a king, which indeed, he was.

Fast-forward thirty years.  I realize that’s a rather big jump to take, but you gotta figure life wasn’t changing at warp speed two-thousand years ago.  It wasn’t like the people were talking on telephones with cords that took ten minutes to dial and then, three decades later, they were taking videos of their children on phones with no cords and downloading them, with music, for their relatives to see on the other side of the globe all while driving in their brand new electric car.  In Jesus’ time, thirty years meant your donkey got old and you might need to trade for a new one. 

The story gets truly exciting now as Jesus begins travelling the land doing all kinds of crazy things that make people either love him, or fear him.  He makes a blind man see.  He makes a lame man walk.  He raises a girl from the dead.  Yes, you read that right.  The girl is dead.  Jesus makes her . . . not dead.  How could you possibly put this story down?  It’s unbelievable.  And it doesn’t end there.  Jesus does some things that are even crazier than raising the dead.  He encourages people to love one another as they love themselves.  He reminds people they shouldn’t look at the appearances of others, but at their hearts.  He tells people it’s better to give than to receive. He instructs people to forgive one another.  Like I said, this man was certifiably nuts. 

And this is when the story begins to take a bit of a dark turn.  You see, as I mentioned, some people are afraid of this man called Jesus, and they don’t just think he’s in need of some Zanax and a good therapist.  They think he’s a phony.  They think he’s a liar.  They think he’s a criminal. 

Of course, the most twisted part of the story is the fact that Jesus knows exactly what’s going to happen next.  He’s like the girl in the horror film who hears a strange noise in her bedroom closet and waltzes right in there to check it out anyway.  Jesus knows what’s coming and yet, he doesn’t change a thing.  He rides into Jerusalem on, what else, a donkey, as the people who do believe he is their king place palm branches in his path.  He treats his friends to one last supper, during which he explains his body and blood are going to be given for them.  He stands silent as one of those friends betrays him.  He stands silent as one of those friends abandons him.  And in a single moment of humanness, he kneels in a garden and prays for his Father to change the story, to give it a different ending, even though he knows it is not to be.  The guards come.  They put Jesus before the one man on earth who can save him.  Despite the desperate pleading of his wife, the man allows an angry crowd to decide Jesus’ fate instead.  You can’t read the story fast enough now, can you?  You have to know what’s next, but . . . be prepared.  It’s ugly.

Jesus is beaten.  Jesus is tortured.  He’s forced to carry a heavy cross on his back while a crown of thorns pierces the flesh on his head.  Then, Jesus is nailed to the cross.  He is hung on a hill and left to die, slowly, in front of the people who have refused to believe he is the one he claims to be.  And when he takes his last breath, this baby born of a virgin, this child called the Son of God and man, this teacher of love and peace and patience and kindness, when he breaths his last, the whole earth trembles and everything changes forever.  Because in that moment, the veil is torn and God is no longer unapproachable.  He becomes . . . mine.  He becomes my Father, my comforter, my healer, my strength, my provider, my Lord.  He becomes the God of grace who forgives my every sin.  And I am a sinner.  I sin every day.  I’m judgmental and selfish and impatient and prideful and lustful and envious and, because of Jesus . . . I am forgiven.  His blood poured out for me.  His blood poured out for you.  

Surprisingly, the story doesn’t end there.  God is a God of miracles after all, and Jesus couldn’t possibly play such an important role in such an incredible story and then just disappear.  There’s a tomb and a rolling stone and a missing body and some very freaked out women and, in the end, Jesus rises.  He conquers death.  He ascends into heaven and, at this very moment, he sits at the right hand of God and lives to intercede for me, and for you.  He also lives inside my heart, reminding me in very real ways of all those things he was trying to demonstrate while he was on earth.  Jesus is alive.

I told you it’s a page-turner.  Eat your heart out, Twilight - this story trumps vegetarian vampires any day of the week.  Because this story isn’t just a page-turner.  It’s a life-changer.  It’s the single greatest love story ever written, ever told, ever lived.  And the story, and the love, continues.

Happy Easter.