To resurrect is to rise up.  It is to bring back to life, to revive.  From what?

From darkness to light

From despair to hope

From bondage to freedom

From defeat to victory

From disease to vitality

From lost to found

From death…physical, spiritual, emotional…death to LIFE (physical, spiritual, emotional).

Love that.

There a story in scripture of when Jesus healed a paralytic. He said, “which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or to say ‘Get up and walk’?  But so that many of you will know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, ‘Get up, pick up your bed, and go home.’  And he got up and went home. But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck and glorified God…”  Matthew 9:5-8

See, we’re awestruck when we see things in the physical. Seeing is believing. And we’re awestruck by the beauty of the resurrection, the truth that Jesus went from death to life, a physical death to life. I mean, it’s , well,…un believable!!  But it happened.

But here’s the thing… the resurrected life doesn’t begin with physical death.  It begins when we’re brought from death to life, spiritually. The physical manifestation is merely an outer manifestation of what happens internally when we ask Jesus to forgive us for our sins, to redeem us. Like a life-saving remedy that kills disease and restores vitality and health, the resurrection power of Christ attacks the sin that numbs and steals and invades.  Sin always takes a toll, sometimes in silence, sometimes not.  It invades and changes people.  It steals the joy, numbs the life, dulls the senses, robs us of the missions, the passions, the journeys we were created to take in our lives.  Sin blocks the relationship with God that we were created for.  Jesus paying that penalty restores it.

So, when I hear the word ‘resurrected’, I think not only of Heaven for those who have gone before us.  I think of me.  I think of the hope He daily restores in my life, the way God’s grace has so resurrected and revived this heart of mine a thousand times and more.  I think of the very personal way that He rolls away the stones in my life and helps me to walk in the freedom of being loved and chosen and whole.  He doesn’t call us to tombs of darkness, death, and endings.  He calls us to Light, and freedom, and life….and beginnings.  The resurrected life isn’t all about Heaven and the future and us. It’s about being ALIVE right here, right now, free from chains that bind and hindrances that cling.  A few thoughts on the Resurrection.  May your Easter be blessed, and may the days ahead be full of the risen hope that comes through knowing the love of the Savior.

Blessings,

Heather

“Now this is (not was or will be…IS) eternal life that they know You, the Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom  you have sent.”  John 17:3