He is risen!

Happy Easter!  Glorious Resurrection Day!  He lives!

Easter has always been very close to my heart.  I am always so excited on Easter morning.  When I was a child we would run down and hunt down the hidden gift and candy that were left by ‘the Easter Bunny’.  Then we would put on our very best clothes, usually new, springy and beautiful, and head to church.  Church was always very early in the morning.  The church we attended would have sunrise services on Easter morning.  I loved being up with my whole family and headed to church as the sun rose over the horizon and the songs and message about Christ’s resurrection.  After church we had a church breakfast.  When I got older I helped to serve at the breakfast, clearing tables and refilling coffee and juice.  Most Easters we would head to one Grandma’s house or another for a large family lunch and afternoon of games and visiting.  It was always a day that I looked forward to, not to mention that we never had school that Monday.

The rush and excitement of Easter Sunday.  But all the while calm.  All the while serene and joyous.  The women that discovered Jesus’s empty tomb had a rushed and exciting Easter morning too.  It was a tense, worried, and somber excitement though, not calm, no joyous… yet.  Can you imagine how they felt walking to the tomb.  They needed to fully care for Jesus’s body, they loved Him, they worshiped Him.  It was a sad and heart wrenching walk.  Do you think they talked?  Or were they beyond words?  Then to find the tomb empty and Christ gone!  Try to put yourself in their place and comprehend the gamut of emotions they went through that morning.  We have calm and peace and joy now - they did not.  They had sorrow, pain, then shock, surprise, confusion, fear, then major adrenaline rushes, excitement, and an insurmountable joy that was uncontainable!  

Can you feel their feelings?  Jesus has risen!  Jesus died for us and has rising from the dead!  Jesus is God, Jesus is our Lord, Jesus has given us a gift that no one else can give!  A new covenant, a new spirit, a new life!

Feel the glory of Easter morning!  

Absorb the glory of our Risen Lord!