Dear friends: At the tail end of this special day during this horribly historical spring, I’m taking a pause to reflect. Here in Michigan, the scourge of COVID-19 may–may–finally be just past its peak. But that is small comfort to those who are in the ICU, perhaps dying, and to the families of those who have lost or are in the process of losing loved ones. Not only so, but in the South, as I type, a particularly vicious tornado outbreak is underway and will likely continue overnight, as is typical of these storms in Dixie Alley.
For many, many people, this is nothing like a Happy Easter. Me, I think of my mother, whom I lost last August. She is with the Lord, and for that I am thankful, but still, it saddens me to think of that little box containing her ashes, lying there beneath the soil. Death, suffering, and sorrow visit us all. God connected our hearts to our tear ducts because he knew the one would have need of the other.
But he also gave us a promise that one day he himself would wipe away every tear.
Easter is the day we celebrate the wonder of Jesus’s rising from the grave–not, as liberal theologians smugly assert, the metaphor of the resurrection but the miracle of it.
It is hard, in this day when the sharp marvel of the empty tomb has been dulled by centuries of tradition and the decades of us just getting on with our lives, to grasp the wonder that began to germinate in the minds of Jesus’s disciples and then burst into full, glorious bloom. They had seen Jesus crucified. They knew he was dead. Dead. And they were no fools. They knew full well that dead men remain dead. End of story. End of life. Done.
And then . . . here came the women with an incredible report. Jesus was risen. They had seen him.
How would you have responded? No differently than those men, I imagine: gently, but nowhere near persuaded. That’s what makes the Gospels so credible–the utter believableness, the fleshy humanity, of their characters. A skeptic today would have been in good company with Peter and the others. But then . . .
“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” (John 20:19).
Imagine the wonder of it. The thing you knew never, ever happened, couldn’t ever happen, has happened. The proof of it is standing before you: that person you loved–no, love; still love, always will love–looking you in the eyes. In an instant, doubt and grief are washed away by . . . by what? How would you respond? What would you feel? You’d be completely blown away. Maybe terrified.
You’d experience exactly what those disciples felt.
And then, as the Master smiled at you, all those first raw emotions would dissolve into pure, undiluted, pinch-me-I’m-dreaming joy.
Joy.
Suddenly your world, which crumbled to its bedrock several days ago, has changed again, this time for a good you can scarcely believe possible. Nothing will ever again be the same. And how wonderfully, wonderfully, surpassingly wonderful that is!
That, my friends, is what Easter is about. It is a day to remember that once, long ago, the impossible happened. It began with one man, the God-man. Our Redeemer lives. And because it happened with him then, as with a seed that fell to the earth and died in order to reproduce its life in a vast harvest, it will happen again. For Jesus, the Firstborn from the dead, is also the Firstborn of many brothers and sisters. Of you, me, and those we love.
Loved ones, in these sad, gloomy, and desperate times, remember: we belong to him, and he belongs to us. He is the faithful one, the resurrection and the life.
Lift up your heads, for our redemption may be closer than any of us know.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus.