Celebrate more than a day …

“What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” 
(1 Peter 1:3-5, The Message)

  Long after the plastic eggs are cracked and put away for another year and the dyed and decorated eggs have passed their time and purpose … the Lord behind the celebration, longs for connection in a loving eternal relationship with us.   Many Christian Believers celebrate the day of Christ’s Resurrection while somehow failing to realize Christ did not rise to become a symbol on a day to commemorate new life. The Risen Christ desires to bring new life to us by being the truth, the way and the life to us.  He left His Spirit especially for that purpose ... to teach, convict, direct and guide us as He empowers us into a new life.

     Since our sins were nailed to the cross by Christ’s willingness to suffer and die for the sin of the world and every sin in each of us, He also took every one of those sins to the grave where they were permanently laid and left in the carved stone tomb. Our new life comes as the Risen Christ meets each one of us, knowing every facet and nuance of the weaknesses in our human heart and every foible in our personality. He comes to us to encourage and help us live the new life He brings through His endless and eternal grace.

     He is the way, the truth and the life but many times we hold unto our way, our truth and our life; which is actually living in our old ways, believing our illusions of the truth and walking in the selfishness of our life. This is how the Risen Christ can be set aside or discarded like the colored eggs and decorations of the Easter season.  The Risen Christ does not desire to be a decoration in our life but to be our life as we live out the days of our lives. The purpose of the Resurrection is not a story or a theme about a new life but to impart a new life to us.  The victory found through the Resurrection is not in the knowing about a new life but in desiring the new life that our Lord and God can bring when the Risen Christ is allowed to be alive in us.  His ways are the ways we follow, His truth is the truth we believe and His life is the life we desire.

     The celebration of Easter is not about a day nor can it be contained in a day.  The celebration of Easter radiates through the Risen Christ living in us.  A Risen Christ who guides, leads and encourages as He meets and walks with us in every moment of our days until He greets us as we come into His presence forever in eternity.  There is no condemnation in His love for us, nor is there anything on this earth or in the heavens that can separate us from His love (Romans 8).  His Spirit may bring conviction but the conviction is simply to turn us in repentance from the futile life of sin and selfishness towards the new life He desires that we live.

     It is sad to limit the blessing of a new life which the Resurrection brings to us, to a celebration on a single day.  A single day ends like the grass, naturally fading away as its time comes to an end.  The new life our Lord and Savior desires us to be part of, is an endless string of new days in the abiding presence of the Risen Christ.  Celebrate each and every day in the life you have with the Risen Christ walking along side you, as your Lord and Savior.  It is the only journey that will matter in this life and in eternity.

"Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God." 

(1 Peter 1:18-21, The Message)

Suggested Reading … 1 Peter 1,  From The Message  

Online Version http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+1&version=MSG