Easter rantings and some humbling Easter lessons.

Yes, I know Easter is supposed to be the most jubilant holiday of the Christian calendar.
Yes, I realize it's the day that changed everything.
But, more often than not, I view it as an annoyance.

Why?
Because I'm selfish and it messes up my routine.


See, lots of non-churchgoers come to church on Easter because "it's the right thing to do".
Well I can't handle that. It makes it difficult to find parking and seating at church.
The sanctuary is stuffy with the extra body heat.
The line for the bathroom is exorbitantly long.

And the worst part of all is that the church feels a need to create an especially showy production to entertain all these guests in hopes that they'll come back.
I just want my normal church service!



But yesterday.

Yesterday was Easter.
I went to my [overcrowded] church, keenly aware of my penchant toward a sour Easter attitude.
I prayed that I'd be able to see beyond my own discomfort in a way that would allow me to experience Easter in a real way.


And you know what?
Yesterday, for the first time, I was able to truly focus my attention on the beauties of Easter.

And so, dear friends, I'd like to share with you what I learned:




Defeat is the only way to truly find release.

Most of the time, Christian doctrine preaches that Jesus died for our sins.
Well, yes, that's true. But what's even more important (and often omitted) is that Jesus rose from the dead for our sins.

The Bible isn't abundantly clear about what Jesus knew in advance in regards to His crucifixion and resurrection.
He clearly knew that something terrible was about to go down; otherwise He wouldn't have spent such an agonizing night in the Garden of Gethsemane praying for the Lord to take the cup from Him (Luke 22:42).
But what exactly did He know? Did He know He would be living again three days later?



Just before He died, He uttered the words, "'It is finished.' With that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit" (John 19:30, NIV).

It is finished.

Those are words of finality.
Everything was over.
Jesus had admitted defeat.

And through that defeat,
through Jesus relinquishing His control,
through His giving up,
that is where we gained the greatest freedom we can ever know.


Even after Jesus proclaimed, "It is finished," He still provided the greatest redemption.


It was once He saw that He couldn't do it on His own.
It was once He acknowledged the power of the Trinity.
It was once He gave up His spirit.

That was when God was able to complete the work.
That was when God was able turn something that was beyond repair into something beautiful.
That was when God fulfilled what His plan had been all along.

After it was finished.
After it was hopeless.
After it was beyond repair.



The concept of defeat is one I've wrestled with on and off for years now.
In a culture that encourages people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, I've learned that it can be indescribably difficult to release my situations and to give God permission to intervene.
But I've also learned that sometimes God allows us to hit rock bottom in order to give us no choice but to look up.


And that's when we see that we can't do it on our own.
That's when we acknowledge the power of the Trinity.
That's when we give up our spirits.



The beauty of the Cross is the most ugly form of beauty in the history of humanity.

The beauty of the resurrection, though,
that was the day that
Sin lost,
Hope soared,
Love won,
And we were changed forever.