It was the Easter dress to end all Easter dresses. Our family had a custom growing up that everyone got a new outfit to wear to church on Easter Sunday. My little brother got a button up shirt, my younger sisters got something adorably pastel colored and fluffy, and me? I think my secret mission was to look like a child bride. The more lace I could find on a dress for a girl under the age of 12 = the most celebratory look for the resurrection of Jesus. I remember the year I outgrew my puffy sleeved, lace-lined floral monstrosity and decided to wear it anyway. (I mean, it was the Easter dress to end all Easter dresses, right?!?) I could barely breathe for the duration of the sunrise service, I don’t know how I stuffed Mary Sue Spangler’s sausage, egg & cheese casserole in me…..and I practically had to peel the dress off of my skin when I got home….. it didn’t fit anymore. There’s just something about trying to make old things work in your own strength, and when you can’t, the allure is lost.
That is why celebrating Easter is so amazing.
The old way of doing things is gone and the power of Jesus MAKES all things new.
If we go back to the very beginning, God made us for relationship with him in the garden. It was an invitation to communion, belonging and the greatest friendship we could ever know. Instead of staying there, our human lineage invited disaster to the party when we chose sin and disobedience over God. The price our sin demands opened ourselves to an eternal world of hurt. (You can blame Adam & Eve all you want, but the fact remains everyone except Jesus is guilty. as. sin.) The aftermath we brought on ourselves was separation from God, and the fallout pain of sin. For hundreds of years humanity felt the loss, and God’s people cried out for redemption, for hope and the way to be made back to what we were created for- living in redeemed relationship with God. So, God provided a way. Not a way to ignore our sins, or dismiss them… He provided the way home. The cost of sin was impossibly too high, and so the blameless one, our Savior, the Hero of every story, Jesus sacrificed his perfect life, for ours. He hung on a cross so our debt was paid, the wrath of God was satisfied and the extravagant love of God was given to us. Truly, the Lamb of God bore our pain, and took away our sin. With our debt paid, we, the unholy, became holy because of what Jesus, and Jesus alone did for us.
With the debt paid through the cross, Jesus fulfilled all prophecy and broke the power of separation, sin, and death and rose again. By accepting Jesus as our Savior, the resurrection power that flowed through him, and his redemption story, now flows through us. We live for the beautiful, the impossible, the magnificent and the holy. We are redeemed, because God wouldn’t have it any other way, he wants relationship with us. Saving ourselves was never possible, and like a garment that doesn’t work anymore we’ve tried to put on the old, but it no longer fits. Instead, we celebrate Easter because we have been made new.
Our best efforts are like filthy rags, incompetent for clean up to get the job done.
They fall short.
They won’t fit the bill.
They aren’t enough.
But the cross and resurrection changes everything.
The bill has been paid, and the doors for salvation have been flung open.
Our response to serve God, and love others isn’t for redemption, it’s out of redemption.
Our work is to know the Father, glorify the Son, and walk in empowerment by the Holy Spirit.
We become message bearers of the goodness of God and spend our lives telling others the truth of who Jesus is, and what he has done.
The old is gone, because the new has come.
This is so much more than getting something new, or putting on something new. This isn’t a tradition, and it’s not just a celebration.
It is a revelation that is beyond amazing. We are MADE new, and invited into the greatest relationship we will ever know.
Relationship with God has been restored, and that my friends, is nothing short of amazing.
It’s miraculous.
With eternal hope,
Joy