Spring Break galloped through town last week, and while we did plenty of Easter celebratory things during her visit, we didn’t get to everything on my list.
I bought all the grocery fixings for a genuine Passover meal, but it didn’t happen.
I double checked we had all the supplies for dying Easter eggs, but that didn’t happen, either.
I’m slowly learning to lower my holiday expectations, so I’m not too concerned with what I didn’t get done before Easter. It doesn’t matter if the kids and I dyed eggs or participated in every egg hunt, if we wore sparkly new Easter duds or made our bird nests.
What matters before Easter is that we remember and reflect and retell the Easter story.
What matters after Easter is that we live like we believe the Easter story is true. And this is the part I forget.
We can sit in Easter Sunday church full of gratefulness for the gospel and then find ourselves slammed into a Monday and Tuesday full of strife, condemnation, and hurts. No doubt, all of us sit squarely in the middle of mucky circumstances. Sometimes we jumped into the puddle ourselves, sometimes others push us. Voices out loud and in our heads say ugly things.
But we aren’t just saved from sin and for heaven. We are saved for battles won here on this earth, too.
“The resurrection declares in advance of the event God’s total victory over all evil and oppressive forces – such as death, evil and sin. Their backbone has been broken, and we may begin to live now in the light of that victory…”
~ Alister E. McGrath
We shakily stand up bruised and dirty, knowing we might find ourselves knee-deep in the mud again. We look to God who is not only our hope of heaven, but also our Healer and Helper with an outstretched hand right now.
Today, may you experience Christ knowing you have the same power that rolls stones and raises dead with you and in you.
May you stop doubting and believe, living now in the light of that victory, which is the only Easter activity that matters.
{Just a reminder that this Thursday is our next out of the blue link up. Our prompt is confidence. Read here for the details!}
I love this post and so needed to read this. We as a family are standing up to our waists in a big fat mud puddle right now. Add to that, almost everyone being sick last week, and I didn’t get much done and we didn’t do most of the Easter centered activities that I had planned for us. So pour some guilt over my bruised head and body that already has mud splattered on it anyways. 🙂 But then as we sat as a family and cuddled and ate popcorn and drank pretend champagne while watching the final episode of The Bible on Sunday night, I thought “this is perfect” even though we are hurting and some of us are still sick. The message of Easter lives in our house every single day. We are a family built on grace and a trust in a savior that walks through the mud puddles with us. He will pull us out of this mud puddle but in the mean time I believe He is standing with us and carrying us through the day’s that I cannot do “this”. When the unspeakable…the unfathomable entered our home and spread it’s evil all over it and us at the beginning of this year, in the form of someone we dearly loved and trusted, it felt like we were drowning in the muck. I really don’t know how we have made it from there to here other than the grace of God and with a strength that is not our own.
“We shakily stand up bruised and dirty, knowing we might find ourselves knee-deep in the mud again. We look to God who is not only our hope of heaven, but also our Healer and Helper with an outstretched hand right now.” I am so encouraged by your words. It is posts like this that help me not feel so alone in this and encourage my spirit to keeping going and to not just sop and give up. I don’t need to beat myself up with anything more so I will take my Easter guilt and throw it is far as I can.
Bless you for blessing me today!
“We are a family built on grace and a trust in a savior that walks through the mud puddles with us.” ~Just beautiful.
Praying for your family now, Lori. May our God fill in all our broken gaps.
Much love.