Resurrection Life

                                                            Easter is over- or is it? Christ has been crucified on the cross taking our punishment for all sins of mankind, yours and mine.  I have chosen the photo in this meditation because it points me to the cross. I ask you to examine the photo. See the three trees? The one in the middle is Christ’s cross to me. The fourth tree, the small one represnets me or you on our knees looking up to the cross. We are in the desert or wilderness looking up to where our help comes from as Psalm 121 says. Our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Why the tree and the wilderness?

Man is not good, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind.” (Jeremiah 17:9).  God said in Genesis that all creation was good, but things changed through disobedience of the first couple. This sin separated us from God who is holy. We needed God to cure our dark hearts through sacrifice on our behalf on the cross. Through Good Friday God in Christ died that we might live a new life, holy and pleasing to him. This is a gift of God. We need to receive this gift to find peace with God and be healed of our sin.

David, the Psalmist and King, sinned and sought after God. Psalm 139 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  It is no light matter to be examined by God, for he is just and omnipotent. Yet, in Psalm 103 it says that we should praise him with all our souls because he has forgiven all our sins,  healed all our diseases, and lifted our lives from the pit. In other words, by his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave he has overcome sin and death. He has brought new life to those who would believe.

That is why we bow our heads and knee before the Lord, our God, our Maker. He is the Overcomer and has given us that right to be his sons and daughters too.  That is the meaning of Easter. It is not about bunnies and eggs and flowers, except that they represent new life.  “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).  At this Eastertide state the commitment as Paul does in his letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20).  This is the Easter commitment and paradox, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21). Dying to self is and living to Christ is the definition of living a Christians life.

May your Lenten and Easter pledge be one of complete submission to Christ, baptized into his death and raised up again in his resurrection. Hallelujah., AMEN.