Everyday Easter: A Lenten Meditation

SCRIPTURE And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. 1 Corinthians 15:17-19

THOUGHT Why reserve talk of resurrection for only one Sunday a year, when its gifts grace the landscape of our faith and daily lives so generously? Perhaps this truth is why Paul says resurrection undergirds everything he does or says, and how he lives. If Jesus didn’t rise, he says, our faith is in vain, or worse, completely futile. Our sin is still present before God, the veil is not torn, and we must pay the debt ourselves. Sadly, this is the impossible task that faces us if we cannot accept the sacrifice of Christ as payment for our sin. The impossibility of being righteous, coupled with the reality that a holy God cannot look upon sin spells our doom, no matter how perfect we try to be.

Such a predicament solved by grace! But self-made men and women are conflicted. They must lay down their struggle to perform in order to receive grace, unmerited favor, something that can’t be earned – an everyday Easter for those who believe.

PRAYER Resurrected One, oh that the conflicted heart could see clearly what the simple can accept: you live again and Easter colors every day of our life in you. Not only here and now, but into eternity, where we will live on, forgiven and free from the burden of our sin.