I’m in love with Easter. I’m convinced; it’s the greatest day of the year. It’s the greatest day of the year as unequivocally as Titanic is the greatest movie ever made.
We all forgot about Titanic. And we all wrote it off as cliché and corny and over the top. But then we experienced it again in theaters this weekend, and we were all left afterwards with our shirts drenched from hours of crying, and our whole bodies racked and shivering from the overwhelming flood of raw emotion and epic beauty. Easter’s kind of like that. It comes around 1 year later, just like Titanic comes around 1 dimension later, and it smacks you in the face with how Powerful it is.
Sometimes wake up calls are pretty tough to get through. Two weeks before I became a Christian I spent the last week of the semester on a couch, recovering from both mono and hepatitis. In retrospect, the amount of mercy God had, in giving me that week to process blows my mind every time I think about it. But I don’t think that would stop me from calling it the worst week of my life. My roommate had come home early, merely by chance, and found me on the couch, barely conscious and bleeding profusely from my left wrist. My body virtually shut down after that, from all the drinking I had been doing and all the blood I had lost. And in that week I was left with every miserable thought, every doubt, every insecurity, every failed answer and misguided step finally blowing up in my face. That question ringing in my ears, How did I end up like this? Each second of that week felt more hopeless than the last, each breath sinking me deeper into despondency. Like I said, wake up calls can be tough. But sometimes they’re beautiful.
I saw a lot of Baptisms this weekend. And I can’t tell you how hard it was to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks, a huge grin from lighting up my face. I think I saw nearly 30 people publically confess their faith, take the dip, and answer ‘yes’ in new, emboldened voices, to the two questions posed before them; recognition of Jesus as King, and an obligation and passion to follow Him. And to me that was a beautiful wake up call: a reminder of how far God’s brought me, of how blessed we are to be His adopted sons and daughters, of how faithful He is, of how good He is, of how worthwhile it is to follow Him.
The day I accepted Christ, right before New Years last year, was the day the scab fell off my wrist. And the new skin, shiny and white, stood out in a jagged z, no longer a painful reminder but an emblem of hope, of wholeness, and renewal.
Today I saw hundreds of faithful followers lift their hands in reverence and in praise, in gratitude and in worship of a King. Amazing Grace! You could hear it in the fervency of the worship. Christ is risen from the dead! You could see it straight through their eyes, their gaze turned heavenwards. Oh Father we love to sing out your praise! You could feel it, emanating from those whose heads were lifted in passionate salute to a God who saves, a God who mends broken lives, a God who redeems the lowest and the most undeserving, and a God who does it out of love, before we even realize we needed it.
Today I couldn’t help but notice, that scar on my wrist shines out even clearer than the day my journey first began.
Oh praise the One who paid my debt, and raised this life up from the dead!
Exactly one year ago was my first Easter with any sort of true understanding of the Gospel. And I will never forget how passionate that day was, how much the thought of a Savior engaged our hearts completely, as three of my best friends in Denmark and I spent the afternoon sharing what the Gospel meant to each of us out in one of the public parks, before pooling together to cook a family dinner and crying together through the Passion of the Christ. I’ll never forget how God brought the four of us, from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Denmark, and Chicago to celebrate new life as brothers and sisters through His death and resurrection. I’ll never forget that feeling of purpose, of belonging, spinning in circles as we blasted Phil Wickham’s Eden, truly celebrating being truly alive!
And this year I know that feeling of true joy wasn’t a fluke. I see it in almost every face that walks out of those church doors, I read it all day long on my facebook news feed – the world is on fire for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we can’t help but shout it out, to whoever has yet to come into this glorious freedom, into this marvelous light.
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death, come awake! Come awake! Come and rise up from the grave!
I cannot tell you how much I’m in love with this day – I guess I'm just happy to be here.
Love,
Danny
