Easter is approaching. You should be surprised.
I know there’s only a small chance that the holiday will actually sneak up on you and that you will wake up Easter morning unaware. But if it did happen, it would be appropriate. One feature of the first Easter is that it surprised absolutely everyone!
No one expected Jesus’ resurrection. The Bible tells of several people going to his tomb that first Easter morning, but not even his closest disciples thought they might find Jesus alive there. This in spite of the fact that they should have known.
They had personally witnessed the resurrection of at least three people, None of that seemed to matter.
This shows that the resurrection was so unimaginable that it was normal for even the closest followers of Jesus to have doubts or to be left dumbfounded.
Maybe this is why Easter hasn’t caught on as a huge cultural celebration quite like Christmas has. The point of Christmas is the human birth of God’s Son, and birth is a wonder we’re familiar with. Christmas celebrates God embracing what is commonplace. But Easter celebrates a person attaining the unthinkable! If we believe the resurrection, it must change everything we accept about what is possible. And so it must completely change how we live.
I should be stunned to my core that Jesus is alive today! I should be shocked when I read that God’s resurrection power extends to me: “Even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead” (Ephesians 2:5). Instead, words like these have become familiar. They’ve lost their punch. They seldom change me.
So Easter is approaching, and this year all I want is to be surprised.
5 years ago
1 comment:
Well Said, Dear Ones, try this on for size from St. Paul's 2 Cor. 3:18: "But we with unveiled faces, reflecting as in a mirror the Glory of the Lord, are being transformed into
God's very image, from Glory to Glory!"
Gerard Manley Hopkins got it, too, when he wrote:"Make ready for The Christ whose smile, like lighting sets free the song of everlasting Glory that now sleeps in your paper flesh like dynamite!"
Our real challenge is to realize that the moment we live in with our dawning awareness of the Eastering of our hearts is the Glory. Once aware, we can't act like we don't know. When the Lord said in exaperation in the garden to his sleeping disciples: " won't you stay awake with me,?" he was talking to them and every generation forward. There are all kinds of ways we can be lulled back to sleep; there are times when we may want to curl up in a fetal position and just face the wall, but, now that we are awake, we cannot act like we don't know what to do and who to become....It is up to us now. Our only task is to be the Glory that lives within us! Shall we? I'm up for it and it sounds like you are to. Many blessings, Aunt Katie
Post a Comment