Oh, sweet Eastertime. It feels like it snuck up on me quickly this year. Maybe you feel the same? I still have to get down the décor and cute weaved baskets, then sift through my recipes to find my momma’s famous gooey bars that she somehow transformed into bird nests and topped with pastel M&M’s. Oh, they were so cute and yummy. She always made Easter so meaningful and fun for the kids. I sure do miss her!
This marks the second Easter without my precious mom. She passed four days after Easter in 2022, so this holiday always brings up some tender and raw emotions for me. Grief has a way of taking us by surprise, especially on special holidays that take on so much meaning for us as believers.
Yet, I am reminded that Easter is a time that causes us to pause, reflect, and embrace hope! Hope. It’s something we all desperately need. In a world riddled with hurt, loss, and turmoil, this solemn time leading up to Resurrection Sunday gives way for us to posture our hearts to thank God for His rich love, unfailing mercy, and grace.
Are you in need of hope? What about a kind of hope that settles your heart and soul and comes with a promise of being reunited with your loved ones?
If so, then I invite you to take a moment to reflect with me on the reasons why this tender time of year can fill us with so much hope! After all, Easter marks the most monumental event that has ever taken place in human history, reminding us that death is not the end. That is cause for celebration and endless rejoicing!
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, God is speaking to us through this sacred and holy time, reminding us of His love and faithfulness. Let’s choose to be still and listen, because while Friday was filled with grief and sorrow… God is declaring that Sunday is coming!
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1. God Loves You
God’s ultimate love was displayed for us on a cross that brought about scorn and shame. But why a cross? Why this sacrifice of such torture? Maybe you have wondered if this was at all necessary. While God could have just as easily granted forgiveness and moved on, we must first recognize that our ways are not God’s ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), and His plans always bear forth a purpose and/or bring a promise. The cross did both!
The plan on the cross was to demonstrate His love for all of mankind while giving us a pathway to deliver us from our sinful selves. His plan and purpose reflect the nature of His faithfulness, compassion, and mercy. The cross symbolizes that Jesus died in our place. He was our substitute. He took on our sin, our suffering, our every temptation, our pain, and every single hurt - all for our sake. His cross symbolizes the scorn, shame, and torture He endured for us!
That, my friend, is the richness of God’s love – for you and me (Romans 5:8)! So, how are we to fully understand it? We simply cannot! But we can rejoice in the truth that God’s love runs so deep that it came with a precious price, allowing us to live fully. Praise be to God!
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2. God Is Just
God approaches forgiveness differently than we do. He knew we could never fully pay the price for our sin, as we are all innately broken and deemed sinful since the fall (Genesi 3). All of our wrongs, from our thoughts, actions, words, and deeds to the deceitfulness of our hearts, needed to be covered.
Scripture tells us that God is holy, righteous, and just (Deuteronomy 32:4 and Psalms 145:17). That said, God cannot look upon any wickedness and tolerate it. In other words, sin cannot be in the presence of God (Habakkuk 1:13).
This is why God gave us His Son. Jesus was the sacrifice needed to atone for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3). God made Jesus, who had no sin, take on sin for us so that we may become righteous to God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
However, that said, because we live in a fallen world and will keep getting wrapped up in sinful patterns, we must understand that God continually seeks after us and the nature of our hearts. He wants us to come to Him, to open our hearts in repentance, and seek His grace (1 John 1:8-21). This is the loving nature of how our just God grants forgiveness. He doesn’t want us to be weighed down with sin but to repent, live differently, and become more like Christ.
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3. God Covers Grief with His Mercy
God reminds us that this life is not meant for us to endure forever. Death is certain and a punishment for sin. As sad and sorrowful as Good Friday was, especially for His faithful followers who gathered at His feet that day unbeknownst of His resurrection, we have hope in knowing Sunday is coming.
This declaration that we proclaim on Easter morning that “Jesus is Alive” Gives us the reassurance that we also have an opportunity to die to self and be reborn again. Hallelujah! When we proclaimed our faith and chose to walk in a bold new way, choosing to follow The Way, not our way, we essentially died that day (John 14:6 and 2 Corinthians 5:16-17).
However, being “born again” does tend to come with a little sorrow and grief. As we may mourn our past life or who we once were. We may be tempted to go back to what we once did before because following Jesus requires us to be different and to step out of our comfort zone. It calls us to embrace an upside-down view of the world and love the least of these, forgive others, and guard our hearts and minds from evil. It’s not easy to follow Christ.
Yet, this is exactly where God meets us with His mercy. While grace runs freely to those Who have accepted Him and cover our sins when we go to Him with a repentant heart, mercy meets us in sorrow and loss.
Easter reminds us that God draws near to those who are hurting, lost, or grieving. Whether that be a grief to self or grieving the loss of a loved one, we can have hope! So, let God cover you today if you need His mercy, sweet friend. He is with you!
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4. God Gives Us Eternal Security
God’s plan for our lives is to be in constant communion with Him and to live in paradise. We were made to be whole and holy, a perfect creation. We were never supposed to get sick or age. We were to live in peace and humbly walk with the Lord. Death was nowhere in the equation. But, the enemy destroyed all of that with a single tainted and lustful fruit.
Now temptation continues, turmoil ensures, lies abound, and death is a part of this life. Why would God allow this? Once again, while we can’t fully comprehend God’s ways as they are so much higher than our own, we can see in Scripture from the very beginning in Genesis that God did not want His most prized possession, the people He made in His own image, to experience death. Yet due to the choice to eat that fruit from the tree of knowledge, the consequence was dire, and Adam and Eve, and all of mankind, suffered separation from God (Genesis 3:22-24).
This I why God created a bridge from us to Him through Jesus. Then God gave us the opportunity to choose – everlasting life with Him through our faith or siding with evil and enduring death and severance from Him through hell?
This is why Easter brings the perfect opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ. There is a world of hurt searching for just a ray of hope, so let’s be bold and share it!
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5. God’s Message for Us on Easter
God tells us that as Christ-followers, we have real, true hope, not false hope that the world provides. Where the world is loud, clamoring for attention, and filled with many mixed messages, God’s messages are simple and clear.
God says as His faithful followers that we are blessed, chosen, forgiven, justified, sanctified, redeemed, and given the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). God says through His Son, Jesus, we are a part of His family (Ephesians 1:5). He says that we are His beloved children! Easter loudly resounds that we were so worth saving!
This is God’s distinct message for us on Easter, maybe even more so than any other time of year. That’s because Easter reminds us of His sacrificial love, that He is a just God, that His mercy covers our sorrow, and that our eternal life is secure. God reclaims His plan and purpose on Easter to a lost and hurting world that desperately needs a way to hope!
God’s message is that He is the hope!
Prayer for Hope
Gracious God, our words can not even begin to express the amount of gratitude we feel for the love You have for us. As we enter into this precious time of year, we ask that You place Your message of hope in our hearts and give way for us to share that message with others. We love you so very much! Amen.
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Originally published Friday, 16 February 2024.