Easter is over; the Easter Bunny has come and gone with only bits and pieces of the sweets he blessed us with left to finish. Easter baskets have been stored, and we have moved on past the resurrection!
Easter is Over
Our spiritual joy that we experienced in celebrating the resurrection in fellowship and worship with our friends and neighbors has been replaced with our return to the “real world.” We very quickly had to return to our day-to-day lives and the challenges that we face every day. The struggles of the day bring us to relate better to Good Friday or “Black Friday” than to the Joy of Easter morning. We feel like we are so busy just surviving every day that we put Jesus back into the tomb with plans to celebrate him coming out next year.
This can be difficult for us, but it matches the cycles of our lives between Joy and struggle. We experience Joy in celebrating our lives through marriages, births, and anniversaries, yet these are joined simultaneously with the struggles of sickness, financial shortfalls, and broken relationships. This cycle can often lead us to a cynical view of life that leaves us living on Black Friday with a once-a-year break at Easter.
This is normal for our human spirits and reveals our common spiritual ground with God’s people in the Old Testament. The writer of Hebrews described this in view of the historical perspective of how the recurring mentality of our Joy and struggle matches our view of forgiveness.
Christ’s Sacrifice Once for All
10 The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. 2 If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared.3 But instead, those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sins year after year. 4 For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins………….….12 But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 13 There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. 14 For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy. Hebrews 10 (NLT)
God knew it would be difficult for us to grasp the Truth of the resurrection and the forgiveness offering that was provided once for ALL of our sins and shortcomings. Jesus is not a once-a-year priest to offer a sacrifice for our sins. He was the sacrifice that was offered one time for our forgiveness and to set us right with God.
Easter is not a one-time-a-year event for Christians. Easter is a celebration of Jesus’ death for our sins and his resurrection by God’s Power to confirm our eternal life. When we gather together at any time, we represent His living body of the Church. The Church is living proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the forgiveness and Hope of Easter should be present every day in our hearts and our lives.
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