Rebirth

Today is Easter, and I have to be honest. I don't mean that I have to be honest because it's Easter, though it does seem especially difficult to be dishonest on a day like Easter, a day when we are all so focused on that which is honest, on that which is Truth.

But, that's just it, really. I haven't been too focused. Specifically, I haven't been too focused on prayer, on reading my Bible, on much of anything that I feel like I should be focused on. As the days and weeks led up to Easter, I wasn't really looking forward to it. I wasn't really anxious with anticipation. I wasn't really much of anything.

Except that I was a bit of everything. I was sick. I was busy. I was working my two jobs. I was grading a giant stack of papers. I was battling a mountain of laundry. And if I'm going to be very, very honest, I was losing the battle with the laundry. In fact, I died on that mountain. I'll be wearing a cocktail dress to teach in tomorrow, because that's all that's clean.

And in all that busyness, I wasn't thinking too much about anything, well, spiritual.

But, Easter is a time of rebirth. Or, more specifically, it is a time of coming back from the dead. It is a time of remembering that Jesus, my God and my friend, overcame death.

And then He returned to us.

This year, for some reason, it occurred to me that the Easter story is truly strange. It's that last part that's strange. He returned to us. It's always seemed so normal before. Of course He returned. That's the way the story goes, every time, every year. Jesus returns.

But, as I was fighting the battle on laundry mountain, I started wondering why. It makes absolutely no sense that He would return. I mean, I'm sure that theologically it makes sense, fulfillment of prophecy and all of that, but it doesn't make rational sense that He would return to a world that killed Him. However, that He did return, despite the cruelty with which we treated Him and the callousness and hardness of heart which caused us to doubt Him, just speaks so clearly of the Truth that is the unchanging love of God. That "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." And, not only died for us, but returned to us. Returned to us because, despite the ugliness of our sin, He loves us. Because, in all times and all places--even now--God calls us to Himself.

So, I was thinking about Easter this evening, and I decided to read my Bible. It seemed like a good enough start. I turned to Philippians, which I so often do. Each time it's like meeting an old friend. Each time I read Philippians, I feel how much I've missed the encouragement that reading it brings. I've marked it up so much, but each time I read it, I find something that didn't stand out to me before, something that maybe I was meant to appreciate at a later time. Tonight was like that as well.

As Easter is a time of rebirth, I felt like it might also be a time that needs a prayer all its own. So, here is my prayer for this next year:

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

Much love to each of you on this Blessed Easter,

Sara