With a global pandemic touching practically every country around the earth, it feels like Easter is getting short shrift this year. Perhaps that’s understandable, but we shouldn’t let it happen for a number of important reasons. Because of Easter, we know some things that are incontrovertible.
We know that God is for us because Jesus died for us. Not because things always work out for us. This is the power of the resurrection. This was the power of the resurrection in a First Century culture that was very dangerous. Beyond everything they had experienced, everything they saw, men and women emerged with extraordinary faith in God — and in Jesus because of the resurrection.
It’s how we know that suffering is not evidence of God’s absence, because men and women who saw extraordinary suffering, men and women who experienced extraordinary suffering, maintained faith anyway. Because the foundation of their faith was not a perfect world where bad things never happen to good people. The foundation of their faith was a resurrected Savior. These are things we know because of Easter.
Easter means that you have stepped into this amazing new kind of relationship between God and humankind. It’s evidence that you have entered a kingdom that is not of this world, you’ve entered a kingdom that makes no sense to this world, you’ve entered a kingdom that’s the upside-down kingdom of God that would ultimately circle the globe and impact every single civilization for almost 2,000 years. It’s evidence that you have stepped into the kingdom that has a King who chose to give his life for his subjects. The King who is worthy of your devotion, the King who is worthy of his name.
That’s what we know because of Easter.
