2 tombs at easter

3 easters ago we were in Tiananmen Square with 3 other families on the first of 3 days of touring in Beijing.

one of the spots we saw was mao's tomb (pictured above). the building was ENORMOUS (look at the people in the picture to get a sense of scale!) and there was a line of at least a 1000 people waiting outside to see mao's body which is entombed in glass. seeing mao's body is a pilgrimage- a "must see"- for people in this beautiful country. a lot like seeing the statue of liberty or the washington monument.

to try to explain the influence of mao would be like trying to explain the influence of mickey mouse and dora on a toddler. it's complex and not always logical.

i remember having an eerie feeling when i saw the long line of people waiting to get a glimpse of the embalmed body of this iconic legend. at the time- i think it was more a feeling of how this man's leadership had resulted in the overpopulation of a country that couldn't sustain the birth rate and lead to one of the many factors in the complex tapestry of why we were in china in the first place.

adopting xixi.

what didn't hit me until the following easter was the irony and the sadness of the line of nameless, faceless people waiting to see an embalmed body in a tomb. the body of a man many have worshipped.

i was standing in tiananmen square on easter morning watching people pay tribute to a dead man. a man whose power and authority shaped the culture of a nation of a billion people over the course of the last 100 years.

what a shocking contrast to worshipping a man who rose from the tomb. a man who had
the power and authority to conquer death. a man who has had the power to transform the world for the last 2000 years. a man who knows me by name and knows my whole life story! a man who for the joy set before him suffered the cross, endured the shame, and sat down at the throne of God!

spending easter in tiananmen square witnessing this sharp contrast of tombs has been forever burned in my memory.