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Pastor Jay's Blog

Why Easter Resonates Within You

 

No matter how hard people try, they can’t escape the fear of death.  They can surround themselves with a stack of evolutionary textbooks, a hoard of hardened atheists, and a phone full of comedy routines about aging, but death still haunts them.  My understanding is that the original zombie movies were a representation of the slow and creeping inevitability of death.  Sure, you could outrun a zombie or bash in its head, but could you do that to a thousand zombies who just keep coming for you?  Staying a step ahead only lasts so long. 

 

Have you ever seen a dog in an existential crisis?  Yes, animals have fight or flight instincts in the face of danger, but we are talking about being tortured by the thought of death.  This does not happen.  Why does this happen to all humans, but no animals?  The general answer is that we are made in the image of God.  Our nature as image-bearers answers lots of questions.  But the specific answer, the feature within our image-bearing, is found in Ecclesiastes. 

 

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

 

As a jeweler creates a ring with special prongs in which a jewel is set, so God creates us with a setting for the eternal.  Our souls are the meeting place of time and immaterial consciousness.  We have the inescapable realization that our souls will continue forever.  Eternity is before us and we will be somewhere.  If we were only the combination of chemical processes, then we could dissolve into nothing and be no more.  But we know in our heart of hearts that morality and logic, as well as our own thinking that wrestles with both of those, are not just the fizz and pop of physical chemicals.  They are immaterial and they transcend this physical world.  They are features of a realm we cannot yet see with physical eyes.  Death is not the end, but the beginning of something eternal.  But eternal what?  An eternity of life and joy or an eternity of destruction and agony? 

 

This is why Easter matters.  This is why Easter resonates within us.  It touches on the eternity set within our hearts.  Easter is the truth that death, both physical death and eternal death, can be overcome by life.  How can this happen?  Only by the power of God through the work of Christ.  Jesus accomplished a perfectly obedient righteousness and a perfect propitiation in blood.  Having completed his perfect work, the Father put his acceptance of it on permanent display by raising Jesus from the dead. Because of what Jesus did, and because God received it completely, sinners can also be given life.  All who trust in Christ alone have eternal life and will be raised to join their risen Lord.  May you embrace all that Easter is so that the eternity set in your heart resonates with joy. 

 

 

 

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