Hello, dear friends. I wish you a joyous and happy Easter!
In this season of resurrection, these next 40 days, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ after the passion and suffering and death. We also celebrate in these 40 days and in this ongoing season of our church, the resurrection of Jesus Christ that’s new every day, the resurrection that draws us into new life beyond suffering and death and sorrow.
All around us in our world, we see the divisions and the sorrows, the grief and the many ways that we are not experiencing new life. It can feel that there is no hope and that all hope is lost. And yet, as in our own burial rite, we say we are resurrection people and alleluia is our song. At those moments of brokenness and heartache are the very moments when the new life of Jesus comes into play.
As Frederick Buechner reminds us, the resurrection of Jesus Christ means the worst thing isn’t the last thing. And so all of us together are called into the new life that Jesus Christ offers us to celebrate what it is to know that whatever challenge may be before us, that the good news of Christ is always, always, always regenerating and bringing new life.
That our lives are in the hand of a God who loves us and knows us and is greater than the challenges before us.
So in this season, as we celebrate resurrection, my prayer for all of us is that we would be filled with hope, the hope of that resurrection. That we would know joy, a joy that is not dependent on circumstance, and that we would most of all feel the love of Jesus Christ, that eternal hymnody of love, that God is always inviting us to share, both within our own lives and to share in this hurting world.
So happy Easter, and may we go forth with a message of Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! And may you be blessed.
