Skeleton tree, the original Mercy Seat.

It still amazes me that the sheer horror of Jesus and the resurrection is seemingly overlooked. Yes, it is celebrated, but the absolute blood laden carnage of the event still blows me away, is seemingly forgotten. Essentially, Jesus was a Jewish religious and political dissident, betrayed by a suicidal friend, cast out by his people, sentenced to death by a representative of the resident conquering horde, crowned with the equivalent of the spikiest Bougainvillea ever encountered, and was lucky enough to be repeatedly flogged and brutalised in the extreme. WHILST carrying a couple of ‘sleepers’ (think the timber supporting railway tracks) bolted together in the middle, got nailed hand and foot to it, was pulled upright, had his legs broken, causing him to suffocate. From there, he was stabbed in the side of his chest by a Roman with the ‘spear of destiny’ (the name hardly does it justice in retrospect) ‘just…