I grew up learning about the Easter story through flannel board Sunday school lessons and my parents reading it aloud from their bibles and church choruses of “Up from the grace he arose! With a mighty triumph o’re his foes…” These were regular, normal parts of my childhood forming a deep foundation of belief. So I knew it was true: Jesus had died, was buried and rose again, the same way I knew a quarter was worth 25 cents and running through a sprinkler in sticky, hot Florida summers was refreshing and I was always going to get eaten by the blue ghosts while playing Pacman on my Atari. It was a truth simultaneously obvious, good and a foregone conclusion. And I suppose that is a reasonable starting place for truth in a child’s heart. But I did not know it was THE truth that would forever alter the beat of my heart.
On the adult side of life, many of my other foregone conclusions fell apart pretty quickly. I assumed my marriage to my high school sweetheart, much like my parent’s marriage, would be permanent and wonderful. But six years and two babies later, I woke up divorced and broken. I just knew motherhood would come naturally and I would be the one mom who got all the important things right. 26 years later I can testify to the heartbreakingly difficult seasons I thought I might not recover from and the pride wrecking mistakes and failures I deeply wanted to avoid but made anyway. I believed surely once I had a successful career, all my insecurities and people pleasing tendencies would disappear only to find them still resurfacing in maddeningly ridiculous moments. Many of the beliefs I had about life have been proven false in the 40 years after childhood ended, but one.
Resurrection is possible. Resurrection is promised. Resurrection is reality.
Jesus really did walk out of the grave. He took power over the same sin and death that killed him on the cross and crushed the enemy of our souls by grabbing back the keys to our prison cells of sin and death when he paid the ransom with his life. He was crushed, so we would not have to be. He was abandoned so we would always have the Father. He let his light be darkened so we could live in the light forever. He took our place and then he secured our future. Jesus did not just defeat death and rise up from the grave for himself- to prove his love or power. He is not just a Savior who performs miraculous healing and grave robbing and hell shaking so we know he CAN. He did it to show us He WILL. What he did at the cross and the grave he will do again: for us and to us and through us.
Jesus said it is finished, but as Tony Evans says, “he did not say ‘I am finished’. He was just getting started.” Jesus brings resurrection to me. He brings my sinful dead heart back to life and resurrects my broken wounded heart to be whole and healed. He teaches the parts of me that cling to idols- success, image, money, pleasure, even marriage and motherhood- to die to my pursuit of these and resurrects a stronger hope in me. Hope that he loves me, is with me and is for me- always. That kind of hope allows me to let go of all other sin, distractions and even blessings that will ultimately let me down. Only Jesus could free me from my death grip on success, being loved and image/ego. His constant, perfect faithful love brings me from fearful of losing love to freely giving love away. From defeated in my sin to victorious. From disappointed in my failed dreams to joyful in my mission to serve others.
Freedom, victory, joy. I see them at the empty tomb. And I experience them today. Resurrection happened. And it is also happening in me.
O Praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up for the dead!