Happy Easter!

Today is Easter and I am lying on the couch in my house with the windows open because our air conditioning is busted. This is the first time I’ve ever spent the holiday away from my family but another family was kind enough to take me in and serve me lunch. I’m not really feeling separation anxiety or anything, especially considering I was home last weekend. If anything, it marks a new stage of independence in my life which is certainly exciting.

I’ve spent much of the day thinking about Easter, the theology behind it all, and its significance to my faith as a Christian. I guess that’s what you do on Easter every year, but this year, I couldn’t help but feel a sort of regret over the way I often treat today. Every year, I devote all kinds of thought, time, and money to Christmas, to birthdays, to myself in general and I think; Is Easter not worthy of the fullest of my attention? Without Easter, my faith would be nothing! I would be better off living as a nihilist passed out in somebody’s pool. I would certainly be hopeless.

But today is the day of my hope! Not that this day in particular is special from any other but the reminder is certainly beneficial and extremely valid. It’s nice to have a day in which I am constantly reminded of the hope I have been given. Death is certain and life would certainly be pointless if I did not have faith in something better, faith in purpose, in love and in hope. I received victory over this hopeless death in Christ and his triumph over death. This is not a celebration fit for candies and greeting cards; this is a celebration of abundant life!

I will always be amazed at the incomprehensible means by which this life has occurred. That a man could be abandoned by the vast majority of his friends and supporters, be offered up to the government as a criminal on par with a murderer and a terrorist. That he could be beat, mocked, and hung naked for the whole world to see. But it says in the Bible that God will not be mocked and even death would be limit for a man that would pay the debt for all of humankind’s inequities. “Sin has lost its power, death has lost its sting,” we sang today in church. How encouraging this is, that Christ would endure what he did, not for us, but for His glory, and in His love remove the debt that would keep us from God. I’ll repeat that. Christ died for because it was the method through which God would show His glory, not directly to save us. Our salvation is the result of Christ becoming a sacrifice and paying the debt for our sin. But God’s glory is the ultimate goal here, even in our salvation. We were never the point but God has chosen us to be redeemed, to be His hands and feet so that God may be glorified. Again, it’s all about God and His glory. A guy I know named David Platt once said, “If God is infinitely good and fully love, then the most loving thing he could do is give us himself.” Well said.

Why is it people of faith regard Christmas in the way that they do, as opposed to Easter, a day that should mean so much more to us? Is it because the whole world accepts Christmas, making the celebration easier? What would people do if we began treating Easter the same, or better yet, out did it? It is my sincere hope that I fully realize the gravity of Christ’s sacrifice and that Easter no longer live in the shadow of a day like Christmas, as great as that day is. Maybe then I will get it all the more. May I leave you with this lyric from a chorus my church closed our service with today. Blessings to all on a truly joyous and remarkable occasion!

“I praise the one who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead.” Amen.