What Easter means to me

 I was going to say Happy Easter to everyone via Facebook this morning, and I realized that I couldn’t just leave it at that. 

Easter has a meaning for me personally that goes beyond a two word greeting on social media. 

When I was 17, I had to wrestle with the reality of Heaven and Hell.  I had been raised all my life in church.  I knew everything my parents and Sunday school teachers had told me about Heaven and Hell.  But, when someone you love dies... Well, let’s just say you examine everything a little more closely.  My beautiful mother wrote me a letter before she died.  In it, she closed by saying it wasn’t goodbye - she would just be waiting for me in a different place, a place where there is no more pain, there are no more tears... Then she said it is just a long hello.  Good grief that woman was amazing. 


But, you see, for that to be true... You MUST have Easter.  If eternity is real, then Easter is not just one more Holiday where you eat too much and finally get together with family.  It is the day where death was defeated.  That tree in the Garden gave up its power, and life as God intended burst back onto the scene in full color. 

Jesus is Risen. 

He does not lie in a grave wrapped in linens.  He is not stuck in a place between worlds.  Right now, He is seated at the right hand of the Almighty, and He is making intercession for me, and for you.  That means He is pleading still with the Father on our behalf.  And, that also means that my beautiful mother, Cindy, and my precious, precious Jacob, are in Heaven - and they are very alive.  When I read the words that Jesus conquered death... and that He went before us to make a way... It gives way to a hope that I can not explain. 

This world is a dark and hard place many days.  I have a precious relative that struggles daily with much hate towards God.  Blaming God for the pain and the suffering that is rampant all over the world - and that his loved one suffered while on this earth.  Right now, in his grieving, I wish I could just sit with him and hug him tight.  I know that anger.  I know the feeling that goes along with “you could have stopped this - and you didn’t!!”  His is more of an “IF you could have, why didn’t you?”  If God is real and He allowed that much pain to enter into the life of one person... how could He be good?  I just want to squeeze him and tell him that this isn’t how God intended life to be. But, He did not choose to make us robots that HAD to follow Him.  He allowed choice - and thus, He allowed sin to enter the perfect beauty of what He had created and destroy the perfection and peace that comes with residing with Him.  However, and this is a big HOWEVER... when we chose wrong... He made a way to restore everything to the beauty He had originally intended.  We just can’t see it while we are here on this broken Earth.  Like a kind Father, He instructed His children, Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  He didn’t just set them out there and wish them luck.. He told them don’t eat of the tree or you will surely die.  They didn’t understand what that really meant.  There wasn’t ONE OTHER thing that was withheld from them.  But, when sin entered the world - death entered with it, and the beauty that was - and the life that was, couldn’t ever be the same here on the earth.  My momma suffered here.  She had much heartache, and much physical pain.  My Jacob did not, and I praise God for that.  He had heartache and loss for certain.  But, he had not tasted the pain of cancer or any disease that robbed him of his health.  Why do some people suffer so intensely?  I believe it is because in her suffering, my momma brought much glory to her Creator.  Never did she doubt His existence, or curse Him in her suffering.  The more she felt pain, the more she longed to go Home, the Home that was available to her because Jesus went ahead of her.  He CONQUERED (utterly defeated) death.  And, because she suffered well, many came to believe in God - and in His Son Jesus.  And, though we cannot see what rewards await for our loved ones who have gone before us... We know that they are many for those who have honored the Lord with their lives.  How much more so for those who suffered long, but suffered well here on the earth.  This temporary pain has been outweighed by so much glory that they will live in forever and ever. 

Easter means eternity.  Easter means there will be a day with no more tears, no more pain, and no more fear.  Easter means that the BEAUTY God intended will be restored and NEVER taken away again.  Easter means that we will rejoice together again because Jesus took all of my stuff, my ugly stuff, and traded spots with me, doing what I couldn’t do, so I could be forever with God after all. 

Easter is beautiful.  Jesus is Risen.

(photo credit to joytojourney.com)

Beauty has been restored and death has been defeated.  I want the truth of that to reside in my heart even on the days here that do not feel beautiful... Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we can not see. (NLT) 

I choose faith.  I choose hope. 

Happy Easter my friends. 

Be Still

Exodus 14:14 “The Lord will fight for you, you have only to be still.”

That is true, you know?

I mean, exceedingly hard to comprehend, but true, nonetheless.

The Lord has spoken this over my life many times.  He is always in battle for me.  Jesus is ever interceding for me.  He never stops watching over me.  Isn’t it interesting that sometimes, all He wants from us in return is (for us) to be still.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;”

He also was known to use that exact phrase when He got up in the boat and rebuked the waves in Mark 4:39. “He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.”

Doesn’t it strike you (even a little bit) that it seems like it is the moments in life where the waves are spilling in over the sides of the boat - and they threaten to sink the whole ship - it seems those are the times He says, “be still.”
He knows what we can handle.
He knows our weaknesses.
He knows our inability to calm the waves.

But, the reason He can tell us to be still is that He also knows - He is able.
He has commanded that they cease - and they have NO CHOICE but to obey.
He knows that what we were powerless to do, He did for us on the cross.

As I was thinking that, I pulled up that scripture so that I could remember why I thought the whole earth was still for 3 hours during that time.  Here is what I found:

Luke 23:44-46 records it like this, “It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured; and the veil of the temple was torn in two. 46And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT." Having said this, He breathed His last.”

Isn’t it something that the whole land was still for 3 hours during the time of Christ’s crucifixion?   I mean, I guess technically, it didn’t have to be still, but it was dark - over the whole land.  When I looked up the word “dark” as used in that verse, it had the synonym blind.  The whole earth was blinded for 3 hours as the sun was obscured.  I also looked that word up - obscured - it said, “fail”, and “to leave; quit”  The sun quit.  I know it is likely describing an eclipse.   But, it is as if the sun couldn’t shine because the Son was dying.  Maybe that is how my “hollywood” brain thinks.  I am dramatic.  But, can’t you just see the sun submitting to the Father as the Son submitted to the Father?

And, talk about a moment of blindness.  Seriously, we couldn’t see at all.  We couldn’t see that the King of Kings was hanging - in pain, and taking away the sins of the world.  Surely we were blind.
I lump myself (and you) in that, because really, haven’t we been just as guilty as those that stood and mocked Him?  I like to think of myself as Mary.  As the one who knew Him.  Who longed to sit at His feet and learn from Him - believing Him and loving Him.  But, so many times I am just as Peter - denying Him - or worse yet, one of the Pharisees - with my list of “duties” and my own record of rights.

This week.  This solemn, and joyous - horrible and wonderful week - I am going to choose to be still.  I am going to choose to look for Him and wait on Him.  And I am going to praise Him that He chose me - even when He knew He would have to die for me, He chose me.

Hallelujah what a Savior!