Well, it's Easter!

Woot! No more seasonal decorating items until the 4th of July! Praise the Lord!

But there's even more reason to celebrate. Here's the link to your mood music for this blog (since I haven't figured out how to put Youtube links directly into my blog yet, if you know how, please let me know!). Don't worry about watching that video, just listen to the music, keep reading & I'll explain why the song is here (and even if you don't share my belief system, it's kind of an exciting song! Beats an Easter dirge).

Easter, of course, commemorates the death & resurrection of Christ. This means a lot of different things to different people, whether it was simply the martyring of a good teacher, the event that started the religion of Christianity, or the foundation of the eternal hope of being able to have a relationship with God. Through much of the traditional religious Easter services, a lot of emphasis is placed on the death of Christ, His extreme sufferings, His choice to receive the punishment for the sins of the world, and our unworthiness to think that we might ever presume to accept His gift of forgiveness for the wrong things we have done and a relationship with God. And then come the graphic depictions of the whippings, beatings, crown of thorns & the cross.

I personally don't share this fascination with crosses. No cross jewelry, decorations, pictures, bookmarks, etc. for me. I didn't really like "The Passion of the Christ" all that much. Why? For me, the cross plays a relatively small role in my belief in God. The Romans whipped, beat & crucified hundreds if not thousands of people, so what's one more teacher they decided to kill? If they hadn't crucified Him, they would have stoned Him or thrown Him to the lions or come up with an entirely new way to kill people. But more importantly, there's no hope in the dead.

But that's where the Easter morning comes in and a huge chasm splits Christians from all other belief systems. Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

Either He did or didn't, only two options on that one. If He didn't, Christianity is a belief system based on a dead teacher & anyone who says they are a Christian is actively believing a lie & will typically claim that their life was changed by this lie. That is nothing new however, people frequently believe any number of lies & attribute change to those lies.

If He really did rise from the dead, however, this drastically changes things. It means Jesus has power over death. It means Jesus is who He claimed to be, the Son of God. It means He fully accomplished His goal of forgiving our sin so we could have a relationship with God. It means Christians aren't a bunch of lie-believing nutcases.

So what if He really did rise from the dead? We can have a relationship with God. We can have HOPE! We can REJOICE!

And here's some perspectives from some friends on Easter...

I'm New Here

The Expectation of Good