Easter Weekend: It Is Finished

April 15, 2022Leave a comment

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Galatians 2:20

Happy Easter weekend, I hope you get to spend it celebrating with loved ones. I want to take this time to talk about peace and forgiveness.

We call Christ the Prince of Peace and it’s a fitting title for the lamb who delivered us from evil. We have been given the chance to find deep lasting inner peace with him. My life hasn’t been peaceful lately, it’s been chaotic. I’ve felt posed for the next thing to rattle us. But that’s not to say there hasn’t also been deep joy, I’ve got a beautiful healthy family and a ton of love in my life. Yes there are flaws, both in me and in life, but if the Son of God can die for the flaws within me the least I can do is make peace with the flaws forced upon me by unseen circumstances.

There is a lot of talk in the self help world about inner peace and I think it’s good talk, but for someone religious I think it’s important to look beyond the guru talks and find the extremely humbling inner peace that comes with being loved, forgiven, and knowing God has a plan. If you’re anything like me you find yourself in phases were you hang onto that and phases when you manically forget that deep peace. I’ve been forgetting it in this season, so what better time than Easter to rewrap myself in the loving cloak of The Prince of Peace?

The truth is God is unmoving, it’s us who drift back and forth to Him, shall we all make an effort to bask in His Glory this weekend and find the peace and love He offers us.

Easter Sunday: Killing our ideals and being unwilling to sacrifice.

April 1, 2018Leave a comment

It’s hard not to think about sacrifice on Easter. God sacrificing his only son, Jesus sacrificing himself, all so that we may be forgiven of our sins. It’s the biggest sacrifice of all, for the innocent to die willingly for the guilty.

I was reflecting on the topic Saturday, but it started differently, without all the praise, but instead with a firm realization that I wasn’t very good at sacrifice.

I have a lot of good traits, I’ve done a lot of good things, but I like to tack on good deeds, I like when I can add them on without getting rid of other things I enjoy. The people on the receiving end never seem to mind. I still feel good about doing the good deeds. It seems like a win win, but it isn’t. You can’t only go out of your way to do the right thing or the kind thing when it’s convenient.

We all have a few people in our life that we’ll go the extra mile for, but it tends not to be a large group. This is one of the oldest problems. We think people have to earn that level of sacrifice. We’re stingy with it. I’m especially so when it gets in the way of things I enjoy, so much so that I don’t like sacrificing things for myself. I was praying about my health because I am still fighting the end of lyme disease and God helped me pray myself into a corner. I’ve been running low on effort, I’m tired of being sick, I don’t want to go the extra mile even though it would only be benifiting myself.

Now that gets you thinking. I won’t even make the long term sacrifices for my own benefit so I’m pretty positive that I’m not making enough sacrifices for others.

The goal with this life is to live as close to your ideal as possible. For Christians that ideal is Christ. We’ll never reach his level of sacrifice, but we could all stand to make more, for ourselves, for others, for humanity. It’s a tall order, and as much as we’d like to pretend we don’t understand how mankind put our savior on the cross, I think we all do. We would rather kill our ideals than try and join them. It’s less work. It’s easier.

But as it was then, it’s the wrong way. So stop listening to yourself when you’re trying to convince yourself that nobody’s perfect and it doesn’t matter if you sin one more time, sacrifice one less thing, enjoy more luxury then you should. Stop killing the ideals you would like to reach.

I’ll be here trying to do the same, failing at it, then trying again, hoping to get a few wins in between loses.

Happy Easter: “It is finished.”

April 6, 2015June 20, 20151 Comment

Flowers are such a silly thing to have represent Easter, just like everything in this world that we’ve made do so: eggs, bunnies, chocolate, and chicks. But regardless of what we’ve made Easter out to be it’s important to remember the real reason. And that is that we are forgiven. All the dirtiness of your soul, all the hurtful things you’ve done to others, all the negative thoughts that you’re glad no one heard. It’s a message for Christians, but even those who do not practice can see the value in what Christ did. I found this. And it tells about what it would actually happen to the body being nailed to the cross. And know that it was for you, so you could be perfect in the eyes of God.