It has always been my favorite celebration. It's one of the reasons I chose to follow Him those many years ago; and still is a huge reason I continue to choose Him.
I went to church today. I've been taking a break from going, and when they started singing, I felt like I was home. I love music, not the traditional hymns, but newer ones. Our church has an amazing band and singing team, I always get lost in the feeling of love, of focusing on Jesus as a person; what He did for me.
Music gives me a break from my mind and helps me delve into my soul. And today the music took me there. It's hard to put into words, but in spite of what politics and western society has done to Jesus and His teachings, I still call myself a follower. And am proud and humbled at the same time to be a follower.
Looking at the origins of Easter, it actually wasn't a 'Christian Holiday' to begin with. There's a lot of information out there and frankly, it would be too boring to turn this into a research paper, but just let me say this: I use Easter to celebrate Christ coming back from the dead. Because of that, I find it difficult, even if I observed the Pagan version, to go out and buy gifts for the children in my life. It seems it's getting more and more popular to do that. I see no purpose in it. I'll do the Easter Basket thing. Actually, I put them together usually the night before Easter and then at our family get together, I give them to my grandkids.
However to me, at church, I felt a very sobering presence; an other worldly type feeling.
It was good! It caused my mind to focus on God...Such a big word, such a big name!!
The mind and God just don't mix too well in my book, in my world. I know there are people who love the theology and can discuss and , or debate the teachings of Christ and of the bible. Trust me, I know people who can rattle off bible verses to explain anything they want to explain. But me? I would rather absorb and appreciate the mystery. The mystery of how me, a human of the 21st century, feels connected with a dead person who claims to have come back from the dead. I feel Him, just like I sometimes feel my dead father, or mother, or my young, dead boyfriend. I feel Jesus, even though I've never physically met Him...I feel Him.
Today at church I felt Him. I also felt the 'great cloud of witnesses' too....the other dead people I've known and loved but who didn't claim to physically come back.
Which is neither here nor there about what they did or didn't claim. But what they all have in common on a personal level, is that they all claimed to have loved me. And I feel them. That is, indeed, a mystery. Because of Jesus, death has lost it's sting. That's enough for me.
"If we find ourselves with desires that nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." c.s. lewis
Happy Easter to you all.
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