On Easter Sunday, we put on our fancy clothes and listened to special music, and with much fanfare, we celebrated that Jesus rose again. This year, as part of my job as Director of Children and Family Ministry, I took the stage to give a three-minute kids’ sermon. I used a pair of bright yellow-tinted sunglasses as an object lesson, explaining that times were sad and dark and hopeless before Easter, but that after Jesus rose from the dead, we could see everything in a new light: not even death could defeat God’s love for us!
The challenge is how to keep wearing the bright sunglasses, how to live in the light of God’s glorious hope when so much death still seems to surround us. It’s the biggest “What now?” question of all.
When the brunch has been eaten, when the Easter baskets have been opened, when the egg hunt is over, when we wake to another ordinary Monday and face the week’s to-do list, do we carry the joyous power of the resurrection with us? How can we live in the light and hope of Easter Sunday?
I think it starts with recognizing that our eternal life with God starts now. Because Jesus is alive, we don’t have to wait until we enter the gates of heaven: He gave us his spirit to be with us now and always.
Minister and author Howard Hageman, in his essay “Paradise Now,” writes:
“Those who live victoriously, though they wait in great hope and expectation for the final triumph of God’s grace, live even more in present experience of what that grace in Christ can do in their lives here and now. “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” is no idle promise for an indefinite future but a simple statement of what Christ can and will do here and now if we put our trust in him and open our lives to his presence and his power.” *
This has profound implications for our ordinary lives. Although we still feel the sting of death in all its forms, we know that the “final triumphs of God’s grace” await us, that one day all of our dead dreams and dead relationships and dead bodies will be restored, that all the ways in which we inflict death on one another will cease and the damage repaired, that even our dying creation will be renewed.
But more than this great hope and expectation, God’s grace can be made manifest in our lives today. By opening our lives to God’s presence and power, what we do and who we become in this earthly life matters.
There is tremendous value in what we do in our present-day lives when we do it for the glory of God, whether it be cooking, accounting, event-planning, parenting, painting, teaching, designing, building, making peace, pursuing justice, reaching out to a hurting friend. This is the work of kingdom-building, and God’s plan for the future includes our efforts today.
We are not just going through the motions, grasping for whatever purpose or pleasure we can squeeze from this life, avoiding any pain or suffering as best as we can. No, we are resurrection people. God’s love for us conquered death and so our outlook is tinged with hope.
We are resurrection people who know that God walks with us in darkness, that God is with us in our pain and sadness.
We are resurrection people whose purpose is to be God’s hands and feet as we join God in kingdom-building.
We are resurrection people who dwell in God’s love for us.
We are resurrection people in whom Christ dwells.
N.T. Wright reminds us in his book Surprised by Hope:
“Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”
Jesus rose from the dead, and that changes everything! One day, only love, light, truth, beauty, and goodness will remain. Until then, we live as harbingers of that Great Goodness of God, finding and giving glimpses of all that is to come.
Liked this post? Please share it! And if you’re interested in growing in your faith as a busy woman, subscribe to get The Scoop, my twice a month newsletter filled with helpful links to the best posts and podcasts to encourage you in your journey of faith! As a thank you, you’ll get access to ALL my resources in the Free for You library: breath prayers, free e-books, and more!
*From Bread and Wine, p. 279
**Feature Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
Sarah K. Butterfield 