Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Hallelujah. Christians are Easter people; we live in the bright, burning light of Jesus Christ’s resurrection and the hope that brings for our future and for our world.
As I write, events in our world (again!) conspire against hope. In these days there is much to undermine any confidence in humanity which we hold. Even with the best intentions human power does not achieve the results it purposes and appears only to add to the chaos.
Yet, despair not!
I stumbled across the following quote this Easter (and didn’t note where I saw it).
“The centre of power in the world is a force that breaks tombs open”
The resurrection is explosive!
It upends history, directs the future towards God’s goal and from it new-creation life flows, The Resurrection of Jesus, Messiah and God the Son changes everything. It gives us humans hope beyond the grave and assures us that God is in the driving seat of history working all things to his good purpose.
The gospels tell us the tomb was opened and Christ was raised in the unseen darkness of the first Easter Sunday. That reminds me that the true power at work in the world is often hidden from our view. Whilst God reveals himself in Christ and the cross there is much of his ways and his work that are beyond our view and beyond our capacity to understand.
As Isaiah understood, from our human viewpoint, there is a hiddenness to God, which speaks to his unique viewpoint and sovereign will over the whole sweep of history and destiny.
“Truly, you are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Saviour” (45:15).
Yet we stand on the sure and certain realities of what God has said and done not on conjecture and speculation. The resurrection of God the Son is the rock on which our faith is founded, it is the force in which to trust as our old world rattles forward.
This same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power at work in us.
This same power is at work to undo the effects of evil and to bring all things to the feet of Christ or as J. R. R. Tolkien puts it in his inimitable way:
“The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.”
What a hope! That all that is evil, threatening and destructive is coming apart even as the world is mended and made whole in Christ.
So, as we reflect on our Easter celebration let’s keep in mind that Easter ushers in a whole new world of hope and life.
Jesus is alive! Death has been defeated, and we are, in Christ, …
Easter People
Iain