Easter is my favorite time of the year. Not because of the colorful flowers, pretty dresses, fun egg hunts, moving music, or throngs of people who turn out for church. Those are all nice, and while I do enjoy them, the best part of Easter is the celebration of the redemptive, salvific work of Jesus, the Christ, on the cross. Truth be told, I probably ought to show up for Easter morning church in sackcloth, because that would symbolize my life without Easter.
Sin is ugly.
It separates us from God.
And I don’t want to be separated from God.
Yet, even more, God doesn’t want to be separated from me. How can that be? Who am I that the God of creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Immortal, Invisible… thinks I am a treasure worth giving His beloved, spotless, perfect Son for? That’s a humbling mystery.
And while I celebrate, yes CELEBRATE Christ’s redemptive work on my behalf, I begin Holy Week with a somber and heavy heart, knowing my salvation was not free. It cost my dear Lord His life. Not only was His death for me brutal and ugly, but perhaps just as brutal and agonizing were the days leading up to it. The days of expectation. The days of knowing… yet not retreating. The days of clinging to His Father, the only One who could provide comfort for the events which were on the horizon.
Would you click over to Scotty Smith’s writing at the Gospel Coalition blog and pray with me?
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