Good Morning, Dearest Friends,
As with many of you, I have known about Easter since I was a kid. My parents would dress us up and we would go to church, we’d hear about Jesus’ resurrection, the Easter story would be read — but I’ll tell you when it became real to me. It wasn’t until I was in college, and I was serving as the Associate Minister at Main Street Church in Kernersville. On Easter, we would have a sunrise service out in the church cemetery. Then later, after seminary, I was the Associate Minister at Mount Tabor Church in Winston-Salem. We would have an 8:00 a.m. Easter morning service, starting in the sanctuary, and then processing out into the big cemetery behind the church.
That’s when I realized to whom it was the most moving. It was the families who had lost a loved one in the past year. I looked into their faces as we stood there in the cemetery when they had only recently buried a loved one. Only then did I come to understand the promise of Easter, the hope of Easter. It wasn’t just the words. It was no longer just a story we heard once a year. It was the one thing those still-grieving individuals and families clung to. It was the promise and hope of resurrection that allowed those families to give their loved ones over to God’s care and keeping, until the day they would be reunited in heaven. Easter was the one thing that allowed them to replace their despair with hope, their grief with the assurance that resurrection is real.
Everything we believe hinges on this one event. When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus said, “I will give you the gift of eternal life.” You can live this life knowing where you will spend eternity, the life after this life.
The event in Jesus’ life can become the event in your life. And he has promised you the gift of eternal life — a promise we know he can keep, because he took his life up again, and was resurrected from the dead.
Jesus makes new and eternal life possible,
Bruce Jones,
Pastor Imagine Church
