Easter Message ’23

Happy Easter!  What a special day this is.  For many, it involves egg painting, Easter baskets, and large quantities of sugar.  The best part of that is how much of it revolves around doing it with family, a wonderful thing to remember during this season.  I fondly look back on memories of doing our annual egg roll at my grandpa’s ranch, where us kids would dig intricate tracks for eggs to roll down complete with ramps and hairpin turns.  We’d go until the eggs were shattered wrecks, then go inside for an Easter dinner together.

All wonderful memories, but as I’ve grown older my perspective on the holiday has shifted.  As a Christian, Christmas and Easter are the two most significant days of the year, but one of them always seems to overshadow the other.  While I recognize and appreciate celebrating the birth of Christ, I’ve come to recognize how His atoning for our sins and resurrection needs to be placed at the forefront of our thoughts. 

So this Holy Week, my wife and I spent our time studying and pondering Christ’s final week of His ministry on this earth, from Palm Sunday through Easter itself and His resurrection.  We meditated on His teachings, despaired over the cruelty of those who stood against Him, and marveled at His love for us all, even those who sought to take His life.  The actions He took that week have eternal ramifications, and I stand amazed at the depths of His caring that He would do so for us. 

If you are not a Christian, I hope that you can still find value in His teachings.  The world today would be a better place if we favored humility over pride, if we strove to be peacemakers in our lives, and if we loved our neighbors as we love ourselves.

For those of you that are Christian, I hope Easter holds as special a place in your heart as it now does in mine.  My thoughts today turn to John 11:25-26:

“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.  Believest thou this?”

I believe in Christ.  He lives, and those words give me a peace that I cherish and hope for all of you to experience as well.  Happy Easter!