Holidays during a period of hard can be overwhelming. Detailed preparation for gatherings, with special services and events filling the calendar, and your heart struggles to care.
If you are facing this Easter week feeling worn out and grasping for hope, lay expectations down, whether from yourself or others. Take time to peel away the layers of unnecessary, and focus on the core remembrances of this season.
Walking through periods of difficulty presents the perfect time to get concerns off of the frills and thoughts onto truth. To not worry about goody-filled baskets but dwell on a God-empty tomb. To cast lists aside while pondering lots cast for His garments. Shifting the weight of the cross you bear yet another day, recognize the magnitude of the cross that He carried and bore for you.
All of our hards combined do not compare to His ultimate one: inner-circle betrayal; heart-wrenching, blood-sweating angst; disciple-deserting and defying loneliness; spitting, hate-filled jeering and mocking; flesh-tearing whips, brow-piercing thorns, unspeakable crucifixion-torment; unfathomable horror of humanity sin-bearing; demon-swirling, fierce spiritual warfare; earth-shaking, grave-belching, murky-darkness phenomena; and the final heart-breaking cry of Father-abandonment, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Luke 22:39-44; 54-62, Matthew 26:67-68; 27: 22-35, 46-53)
Jesus willingly stepped into that incomparable hard. For you. Because of Love.
And then came Sunday. Angel-flashing, stone-rolling, sin-vanquishing, death-smashing, eternal life-giving, love-championing resurrection day. The heavens roiled with chaotic, victorious celebration as the Son of God broke through the barriers of sin and death, and rose triumphant in glorious splendor. (Matthew 28:2-7)
Yes, first comes Friday, looming dark and ugly. Painful, difficult, and confusing. Promises broken and hearts weary. Evil appears the winner.
But Sunday’s a-comin’. Where death falls defeated and sin traps us no more. We trade pain for wholeness and sorrow for dancing. Ultimate love snuffs out hatred. All our longings filled to overflowing and wildest dreams come true. Sunday is the day we anticipate despite our present condition.
Until the fullness of Sunday, the resurrected life, comes to us, He gives tastes and glimpses of that glory, treasures in our hard. He allows us to experience His pressing love, His peace that defies understanding, the joy of experiencing His presence, the hope of resolution of all things wrong and dark and pain-inducing.
My prayer for each of you is, in this week of remembering and celebrating, that your hard will fracture with a blinding ray of hope, that you will be bathed in peace, that you will tremble with the realization of a coming joy that will drown all your current fears, pain, uncertainty, and sorrow. For then you will be. In His presence. Forever. Hallelujah!
Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash
