Yesterday was Easter. Today is not Easter. Is Easter over?
The answer is a plain and simple but resounding NO! Easter isn't Christmas. When Christmas night comes I am always hit with a bit of angst that Christmas is over until next year.
I love holidays! I love the memories, traditions (including the new traditions that we've done once so it becomes a tradition), decorations, food and the list goes on! Given enough time and energy I have often put up more than a couple of Christmas trees! Christmas music and the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas fill the air!
I love Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Fall and Thanksgiving! And they all come and go until next year.
Easter? Not so much! Easter is more than a holiday; Easter is a matter of the heart! Easter is the hinge upon which all of life depends for the Christian. And this matters in humongous ways!
We live in a secular even hostile and pagan world in increasing measure. No longer is our world covered with a thin veneer of Christian faith! That's one reason Easter is so critical! Easter is all about the resurrection. If Jesus only died, then He did no more than any other man. His death alone isn't the pivotal issue. His death bracketed by life on both sides is the essential essence of Easter!
Easter matters and it matters every minute, hour and day of life for a believer. We MUST live in the peace and hope of the resurrection before a watchin' world! The resurrection of Jesus is the heart of why and how Christian believers all over the world are salt and light in a dark, broken world. The other wonderful thing about Easter is that God has built in a weekly reminder as each Sunday - in a sense - is Resurrection Day! Easter must matter in how I live, think and act!
Easter is more huge on my horizon this year than ever before. My sweet Daddy went to heaven last August leaving a huge hole in this world! At Christmas I wondered about what Christmas in heaven is like and shed a few self-serving tears. But yesterday - as we sang and worshipped the Living Savior - I pondered Easter in heaven and concluded that it's always Easter in heaven, always all about the Resurrection. Heaven's light according to Revelation 21:23 is the Light of the World - Jesus!
Jesus, may the power of your resurrection, we celebrated yesterday, show up in our disruptions & disappointments today! (Thanks, Scotty Smith, for this "nails it on the head" prayer!)
Showing posts with label resurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resurrection. Show all posts
Monday, April 1, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
The Last Laugh!
At times, when life's circumstances
feel dark and you are tempted to think the devil has won, consider what James
Stewart, the Scottish theologian, wrote,
The very triumphs of Jesus’ foes He
used for their defeat. They thought they had God with His back to the wall,
pinned and helpless and defeated. They did not know it was God Himself who had
dragged them down to that point. He did not conquer in spite of the dark
mystery of evil, He conquered through it.
Easter two years ago my husband preached an Easter sermon with the title "Who Gets the Last Laugh?" This was exactly the focus - Satan gloated and thought he had won on that Sabbath after "crucifixion Friday"! But Sunday was coming and - when it came - Jesus arose victorious over sin, death and the grave! He did indeed conquer through rather than in spite of!
What a comfort! He walks beside us through (through the Valley of the Shadow of Death)! How sad that - like the Jesus followers on that terrible Friday evening and Sabbath - we choose to live trapped in the darkness of our own fears rather than living in the reality of Sunday that may be coming but is as good as here!
Jesus the Risen, Conquering King gets the last laugh and so do we if we walk with Him! Choose - with me - to live today safe in this wonderful truth!
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Jesus is Alive! So?!
In Philippians 3:10 Paul says something that might seem rather strange: I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection. Who is the Him? That’s easy! It’s Jesus! The resurrection is what we celebrate today – Easter Sunday 2012! Resurrection means that Jesus died and then came
back to life. There is HUGE power in that process!
I know a man who worked for a power company fixing electrical wires. One day he was up high on a pole working on wires and he touched a live wire by accident. A live wire is one that has power still going through it. Live wires are very dangerous. Usually it kills you if you touch a live electrical wire. My friend’s name is Bryce. He didn’t die but he did lose most of one arm. He has a hook for a hand sort of like Captain Hook in Peter Pan. God got Bryce’s attention in that accident. Bryce lost his hand and part of his arm but he found Jesus which is tons more
important than a hand or arm!
What is the power of the resurrection? Well, in simple terms, it’s the power that makes a dead body come alive again. It is the kind of power that only God has! It is the most powerful force in nature – more powerful than a hurricane or a tornado or even a tsunami! The power that gives life to a dead body is awesome and scary! The Bible describes what happened when Jesus came back to life as a truly cosmic event: there was a great earthquake, an angel came from heaven and rolled away the stone that was in front of the tomb and sat on it. It was one huge stone! The angel was kind of scary too! The Bible says his face was like lightning and his clothing white as snow! I don’t know what a face that looks like lightning looks like but it sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?
Do you remember Peter? He is Jesus’ main man who was a real cool, crazy guy! He was all the time jumping into doing and saying things before he stopped to think. One time Peter was in a boat out on a huge lake in the middle of the night with some of his buds. He saw what looked like a ghost walking toward them on top of the water! When the “ghost” got closer Peter suddenly knew who it was – JESUS! Peter was so excited that he asked Jesus to let him walk on the water too. The Bible says Peter scrambled out of the boat and took off walking
on top of the water toward Jesus! (Read the rest of this story in Matthew 14:22-33.)
Another Peter story is about the night Jesus was arrested. Peter followed the soldiers and Jesus but hung back and watched. Peter didn’t want anyone to notice him or talk to him. He wanted to be invisible!
Someone built a fire and the light of the fire showed Peter’s face. A girl asked Peter, Aren’t you one of Jesus’ main men? Peter told her “NO!” Peter moved away and another girl asked him the same question. And Peter gave the same answer. He used a bad word too. Then some of the people watching and listening also asked him if he was one of the men who hung with Jesus. This time Peter was really, really mad so he said a lot of bad words and shouted, I do not know the man! THEN Peter heard a rooster crow. That’s exactly what Jesus told Peter would happen – that he would claim not to know Jesus three times before the rooster crowed the next morning! Hmmmm!
Peter was really, really sad about what he did. He knew he let Jesus down big time! Then when Jesus died, Peter was so very much more sad because he thought he would never get a chance to tell Jesus how sorry he was and he didn’t know if Jesus would listen anyway.
Jesus was buried in the tomb. Early that first Easter morning some women who loved Jesus went to the tomb and when they got there they saw the angel and the stone rolled back. The angel told them, Jesus is not here!
They ran and told Peter (and others). Peter ran all the way to the tomb which was uphill all the way. He was probably panting when he got there. He didn’t stop. He ran right inside to see for himself that the tomb was empty!
A while later Peter was out fishing. He had been fishing all night. He looked up and saw a man on the shore. He realized it was Jesus. He jumped out of the boat to get to Jesus. Then Jesus cooked fish for breakfast on the beach and Jesus and Peter had a talk. Jesus asked Peter, Peter, do you love me? Peter said, O, yes, I do love You! Jesus asked Peter three times. Peter answered three times: Yes, Yes, Yes, Jesus, I DO LOVE YOU!!! Isn’t that cool? Jesus gave Peter a second chance to admit he loved Jesus. Jesus gave Peter 3 chances! Jesus forgave Peter! THAT’S what the power of the resurrection is! Because Jesus is
alive – because He was resurrected (came back to life) – Peter had a second
chance to show Jesus his love! Peter had a chance to be forgiven!
THAT is EXACTLY what the resurrection means for you and me! Because Jesus is alive
we get a second chance too! We also can be forgiven! Wow! That’s pretty powerful, isn’t it?!!!
--children's page written for worship, Easter 2012 @Ann Holmes, all rights reserved, 4/2012
back to life. There is HUGE power in that process!
I know a man who worked for a power company fixing electrical wires. One day he was up high on a pole working on wires and he touched a live wire by accident. A live wire is one that has power still going through it. Live wires are very dangerous. Usually it kills you if you touch a live electrical wire. My friend’s name is Bryce. He didn’t die but he did lose most of one arm. He has a hook for a hand sort of like Captain Hook in Peter Pan. God got Bryce’s attention in that accident. Bryce lost his hand and part of his arm but he found Jesus which is tons more
important than a hand or arm!
What is the power of the resurrection? Well, in simple terms, it’s the power that makes a dead body come alive again. It is the kind of power that only God has! It is the most powerful force in nature – more powerful than a hurricane or a tornado or even a tsunami! The power that gives life to a dead body is awesome and scary! The Bible describes what happened when Jesus came back to life as a truly cosmic event: there was a great earthquake, an angel came from heaven and rolled away the stone that was in front of the tomb and sat on it. It was one huge stone! The angel was kind of scary too! The Bible says his face was like lightning and his clothing white as snow! I don’t know what a face that looks like lightning looks like but it sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?
Do you remember Peter? He is Jesus’ main man who was a real cool, crazy guy! He was all the time jumping into doing and saying things before he stopped to think. One time Peter was in a boat out on a huge lake in the middle of the night with some of his buds. He saw what looked like a ghost walking toward them on top of the water! When the “ghost” got closer Peter suddenly knew who it was – JESUS! Peter was so excited that he asked Jesus to let him walk on the water too. The Bible says Peter scrambled out of the boat and took off walking
on top of the water toward Jesus! (Read the rest of this story in Matthew 14:22-33.)
Another Peter story is about the night Jesus was arrested. Peter followed the soldiers and Jesus but hung back and watched. Peter didn’t want anyone to notice him or talk to him. He wanted to be invisible!
Someone built a fire and the light of the fire showed Peter’s face. A girl asked Peter, Aren’t you one of Jesus’ main men? Peter told her “NO!” Peter moved away and another girl asked him the same question. And Peter gave the same answer. He used a bad word too. Then some of the people watching and listening also asked him if he was one of the men who hung with Jesus. This time Peter was really, really mad so he said a lot of bad words and shouted, I do not know the man! THEN Peter heard a rooster crow. That’s exactly what Jesus told Peter would happen – that he would claim not to know Jesus three times before the rooster crowed the next morning! Hmmmm!
Peter was really, really sad about what he did. He knew he let Jesus down big time! Then when Jesus died, Peter was so very much more sad because he thought he would never get a chance to tell Jesus how sorry he was and he didn’t know if Jesus would listen anyway.
Jesus was buried in the tomb. Early that first Easter morning some women who loved Jesus went to the tomb and when they got there they saw the angel and the stone rolled back. The angel told them, Jesus is not here!
They ran and told Peter (and others). Peter ran all the way to the tomb which was uphill all the way. He was probably panting when he got there. He didn’t stop. He ran right inside to see for himself that the tomb was empty!
A while later Peter was out fishing. He had been fishing all night. He looked up and saw a man on the shore. He realized it was Jesus. He jumped out of the boat to get to Jesus. Then Jesus cooked fish for breakfast on the beach and Jesus and Peter had a talk. Jesus asked Peter, Peter, do you love me? Peter said, O, yes, I do love You! Jesus asked Peter three times. Peter answered three times: Yes, Yes, Yes, Jesus, I DO LOVE YOU!!! Isn’t that cool? Jesus gave Peter a second chance to admit he loved Jesus. Jesus gave Peter 3 chances! Jesus forgave Peter! THAT’S what the power of the resurrection is! Because Jesus is
alive – because He was resurrected (came back to life) – Peter had a second
chance to show Jesus his love! Peter had a chance to be forgiven!
THAT is EXACTLY what the resurrection means for you and me! Because Jesus is alive
we get a second chance too! We also can be forgiven! Wow! That’s pretty powerful, isn’t it?!!!
--children's page written for worship, Easter 2012 @Ann Holmes, all rights reserved, 4/2012
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The BIG Question: WHY?
The BIG question is "WHY?" We have all asked it. Something happens that is just "over the top," and we turn our faces (and sometimes also our fists) heavenward and ask, "Why, God?" At the very least, we ask, "OK, God, what in the world do you mean to accomplish by this? Are You quite sure you know what You are doing?"
Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book addressing this question following the death of his son: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. When his book first hit the bookstores, I was going through my own personal struggle with pain. I found his book at the Christian bookstore near where we lived, bought and read it. Wow! What a sad book! Rabbi Kushner's conclusion is that there are some things just too big and bad for God to do anything about them. He actually states that God is impotent in certain situations.
When bad things were happening to me, I didn't find what Rabbi Kushner wrote very comforting!
In ancient times a man named Job faced an overwhelming wave of one disaster after another: He lost his considerable wealth (oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels) and all the servants he employed to take care of them. Then the message came to Job that all his seven sons and his three daughters were caught in the house where they were at a party. A huge tornado hit the house directly, destroyed the house and all Job's children perished.
In the final blow Job lost his health with a terrible disease that made him an outcast from society and covered his entire body with painful sores. He had to go live in the garbage dump. When bad things happen to good people? Job knew all about that!
Then Job endured the onslaught of his three closest friends (and eventually even his wife) as they all gave him very bad advice for how to respond to all this pain. Job dialogues with them, but he refuses to be influenced by their arguments. Then a brash young man named Elihu shows up at the city dump and imparts his angry "wisdom" to straighten Job out. Elihu basically tells Job he isn't spiritual enough, doesn't understand God's ways well enough, isn't wise enough to know and follow God from his heart.
It is very interesting to read the ancient book of Job in the Old Testament. In chapter 38 God speaks. God comes in a huge lightning storm, and God blasts them all with His truth. It is an amazing recitation from God of His power to create, control and bring restoration.
Job's response is humble before the face of God. Job says, "I'm convinced You can do anything and everything. Nothing can upset Your plans. ... I admit I once lived by rumors of You; now I have it all firsthand - from my own eyes and ears! I'm sorry - forgive me. ... I'll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor." (Job 42:1 - 6, The Message)
Job's God is not like Rabbi Kushner's. Job's God is not impotent. Job's God is powerful, great and good! Job plants his feet firmly on the Rock, and he declares, "I KNOW that my Redeemer lives!"
That is the answer to the "WHY ?" question: God is real! Jesus is risen from the dead! God has power to create and control all the affairs of men and all the circumstances of life! God is NEVER impotent! God is always both great and good ALL THE TIME! And that's the only answer to the question, "Why ?" - every time!
Jewish Job celebrated Easter long before Jesus rose from the dead in his declaration that "my Redeemer lives."
And the Bible records that in the end - when it was all said and done - that God gave Job back (restored what was broken and lost) all he had before times two. Job received (from God's gracious hand) twice as many sheep, camels, oxen and donkeys. And Job and his wife had ten more children. Their other ten were in heaven so they had 20 children in all - twice what they started with.
God is in the business of restoring the broken! God restored Job, and He can and will restore you and me in all our brokenness! Actually that's why there is a Restoration Church gathering in the South Hills of Pittsburgh - because God is in the business of restoration!
Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book addressing this question following the death of his son: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. When his book first hit the bookstores, I was going through my own personal struggle with pain. I found his book at the Christian bookstore near where we lived, bought and read it. Wow! What a sad book! Rabbi Kushner's conclusion is that there are some things just too big and bad for God to do anything about them. He actually states that God is impotent in certain situations.
When bad things were happening to me, I didn't find what Rabbi Kushner wrote very comforting!
In ancient times a man named Job faced an overwhelming wave of one disaster after another: He lost his considerable wealth (oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels) and all the servants he employed to take care of them. Then the message came to Job that all his seven sons and his three daughters were caught in the house where they were at a party. A huge tornado hit the house directly, destroyed the house and all Job's children perished.
In the final blow Job lost his health with a terrible disease that made him an outcast from society and covered his entire body with painful sores. He had to go live in the garbage dump. When bad things happen to good people? Job knew all about that!
Then Job endured the onslaught of his three closest friends (and eventually even his wife) as they all gave him very bad advice for how to respond to all this pain. Job dialogues with them, but he refuses to be influenced by their arguments. Then a brash young man named Elihu shows up at the city dump and imparts his angry "wisdom" to straighten Job out. Elihu basically tells Job he isn't spiritual enough, doesn't understand God's ways well enough, isn't wise enough to know and follow God from his heart.
It is very interesting to read the ancient book of Job in the Old Testament. In chapter 38 God speaks. God comes in a huge lightning storm, and God blasts them all with His truth. It is an amazing recitation from God of His power to create, control and bring restoration.
Job's response is humble before the face of God. Job says, "I'm convinced You can do anything and everything. Nothing can upset Your plans. ... I admit I once lived by rumors of You; now I have it all firsthand - from my own eyes and ears! I'm sorry - forgive me. ... I'll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor." (Job 42:1 - 6, The Message)
Job's God is not like Rabbi Kushner's. Job's God is not impotent. Job's God is powerful, great and good! Job plants his feet firmly on the Rock, and he declares, "I KNOW that my Redeemer lives!"
That is the answer to the "WHY ?" question: God is real! Jesus is risen from the dead! God has power to create and control all the affairs of men and all the circumstances of life! God is NEVER impotent! God is always both great and good ALL THE TIME! And that's the only answer to the question, "Why ?" - every time!
Jewish Job celebrated Easter long before Jesus rose from the dead in his declaration that "my Redeemer lives."
And the Bible records that in the end - when it was all said and done - that God gave Job back (restored what was broken and lost) all he had before times two. Job received (from God's gracious hand) twice as many sheep, camels, oxen and donkeys. And Job and his wife had ten more children. Their other ten were in heaven so they had 20 children in all - twice what they started with.
God is in the business of restoring the broken! God restored Job, and He can and will restore you and me in all our brokenness! Actually that's why there is a Restoration Church gathering in the South Hills of Pittsburgh - because God is in the business of restoration!
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