Easter

Easter is an interesting holiday. You have your bunnies and your eggs, chocolate covered everything and those Sunday afternoon lunches. MMM! You may have also heard lots of different things about this holiday being a pagan holiday, which is not really the topic today. My point is that Easter has some odd traditions; I think you can agree. We could talk for awhile about the oddities of Easter, but I believe a much more valuable direction for our thoughts might be found in the following words.

You know…Easter is a time for believers, which speaks of something that has great power. It is during this season that we remember the resurrection of Christ from the dead. There is great power in the resurrection, which, is beyond my grasp of understanding, but I would like to ponder for a moment with you.

Christ's prayer in John 17:20-23 is for the church to be one as He and the Father are one and that we, as a result, can be one with Him. Christ desired and longed for us to find that intimacy with Him. He knew what was possible because of the oneness that He shared with the Father. As a groom pursues his bride, Christ pursued us to the point of death and beyond. In other words (to put it plainly), He desired us to know Him. Paul writes in Phil 3:7-11 that there is nothing in this world worth more than knowing Jesus intimately. In verse 10 he reveals the very path that leads to this intimacy, which Jesus prayed for and Paul willingly sacrificed everything for. To know Christ is to know the power of the resurrection, to share in His suffering, to become like Him in His death…do we really understand the power in the resurrection of our Lord? Based on this verse, it seems as though we must follow in the path of our rabbi and go through what He went through in order to gain this intimacy.

Easter reminds us of the resurrection, but pondering on the depths of what it truly means once a year doesn’t do justice. The extent of our ability to know Christ is in direct proportion to how much time and emotion we put into seeking to understand the power of His resurrection. For this leads to an intimacy that, without God, would be impossible for mortals to experience. Therefore, if the time and effort spent seeking to grasp the truth of this power is in direct proportion to the capacity that we can know Christ, we must not settle into a mindset of, “well I read this or I pray or I go to these church events…so I am doing pretty good.” Those things are great; however, if the desire of our hearts is to, like Paul, KNOW HIM…we should be willing to consider everything rubbish compared to knowing Him. My question is how should that make our lives different from how we are living today?


- Brant Greathouse