Tag: Kingdom

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Why is Easter such a big deal?

Known for the Easter Bunny, chocolate eggs and the first opportunity of the year to wear white without it being a fashion fopaux, Easter is one of two Sunday services that the most christians feel obligated and convicted to attend. I mean after all, this was the christening of the christian religion, of the church; Easter is the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. With all that Easter didn’t seem to matter that much to me for some reason.

I’m not sure I fully understood Easter growing up.

Easter was a somewhat confusing set of events with Passover, Palm Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Maybe it was the sudden bombardment of Christianisms, religious jargon and complete inundation of holy days and rituals that made me glaze over. Maybe I just didn’t care to be drug to church after strategically locating 10 pounds of candy in the backyard conveniently wrapped up in multi-colored plastic egg-shaped containers.

So why is Easter such a big deal?

Easter, like I said earlier, is the day we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead but I have read something recently that made it more clear than that. As if coming back to life after being dead wasn’t good enough, but I want to also point out that Jesus predicted it. (Luke 9:21-22)

So Jesus predicted what would happen to Him, and pulled it off. Not only that, He predicted other people’s actions. Jesus predicted Judas’ betrayal (Luke 22:21-22), Peter’s denial (Luke 22:34), He predicted the Roman destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:1-2).

In Math there is a concept called the transitive property which I have used to reaffirm my faith and my belief in what the Bible says as fact instead of a wild-conspiracy-concoction-of-fiction somehow compiled across several millennia by different authors. The transitive property basically says if a =b and b=c then a=c. I use this mathematical idea to convey to you, that if Jesus said, “I am the Son of God, I will die and rise again on the third day” we can then in fact surmise that since He died and rose again on the third day, that the former must also be true. Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, gives Jesus’ whole claim that He was the Son of God, and His entire ministry complete validity.

Here’s another excuse to throw a party on Easter:

When we can say with confidence that Jesus is who He said He is, then we can also say with confidence that what He said must be true as well. Who would have better credentials than the Son of God? John 3 gives us our reason for celebration, specifically John 3:16, Jesus said that God loved the world so much, that He sent his only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Eternal Life! If we believe that Jesus is who He said He is, then we’re going to live forever and more than that, Paul writes that in Christ we then become children of God, (Galatians 3:26-29) with an inheritance to His Kingdom. I’ve got a spot in Heaven that God has reserved for me, that Jesus is personally preparing for me (John 14:1-3) and that is enough to get me excited. THAT is why Easter Sunday is such a big deal.

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The New Normal

You are not normal. You feel trapped. You feel sad, confused, anxious, worried, distraught, depressed. You feel like the walls are closing in, you feel powerless to stop something so small, yet that miniscule thing has just disrupted your entire existence, maybe even your livelihood. Instead of going to visit people as an act of love, we are asked to stay away, to isolate, to quarantine, to purposely distance ourselves from each other.

You are completely out of control. You realize that your life is speeding down the road in a direction you haven’t chosen, at a speed way beyond safe limits, and if you’re like me it feels like you’re not even going forward. It’s not that you were unprepared or inept at managing this crisis: you’re just not driving anymore. COVID-19 has wiped out anything and everything that we remember as “normal”.

You’re not alone.

I think that is the inherent point I am trying to make. You may not feel normal right now, but none of us feel normal. We’re all in this together. Which makes what you are feeling, exactly, precisely, and beautifully normal. I must admit that there was at least one instance over the past few weeks in which I spontaneously burst into tears and you know what? That’s okay.

Our culture painted a picture that we all believed: that we were human, top of the food chain, we bent the Earth to our will, the universe was at our command and we were to conquer it and anything that opposed us. But those lies were all just smoke and mirrors. When the smoke vanished and the mirrors broke, the illusion was that we had any control at all. Recently in Nashville, we were confronted with the most terrifying of natural phenomena, the tornado, I remember feeling hopeless, fearful, truly terrified – how does someone protect themselves against something so destructive, so powerful or at least prepare for it?

The short answer was simple: you cannot.

If I cannot control something, if it is beyond my capacity as a human being, why should I even give it more than a passing thought? I think that is why Jesus told us so often not to be afraid and not to worry. There’s a passage in Luke 12 that comes to mind: Jesus is speaking and says, ‘Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?‘

He tells us not to worry about what we will eat or drink, what we will wear, He said that the pagans run after such things. God the Father knows that you need them but we are to seek His kingdom and all that will be added unto us. (Luke 12:29-31) God’s got this. He WANTS us to rely on Him for our needs. God’s got this. Say it again. It is this confidence that we have, this hope in Him and the eternal life beyond this word that really reminds us that no thing really matters in this world. What matters is His kingdom, and the people around us and connected to us.

So, Chris, what then do you suggest we do when we are told to stay home and do nothing? What do we do with all this free time now that we are no longer obsessively worrying about this virus?

It’s a good time to read. It’s a great time to pray. It’s a good time to connect with people. This is an unprecedented time yes, but even more an unprecedented opportunity to connect with God, to read your Bible and to spread the love of Christ simply by picking up the phone, sending a text, hosting a zoom bible study or hey-o, writing a blog. All your excuses have been thrown out the window, and it is obvious to me that God wants to spend time with you. I can say that with the utmost confidence simply because He has gone through extraordinary measures to do so in the past, what makes today any different?

The God of the universe has been waiting for you, to spend time with you. I think now is a good time to make that a habit and our new normal.