Having grown up in a church with its prescribed liturgy, traditions were anticipated and carried out with a heartfelt enthusiasm, bringing life to teachings that could be lacking heart application but rigidly held to established doctrine. The Easter season was truly a “season.” Forty days of Lent were followed by Holy Week, a week in which Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, all held significance and each had its traditions, and they all culminated with Easter Sunday. As a child, I always looked forward to our Easter Sunrise Service, although I’m not exactly sure why. As an adult, many of those childhood traditions have faded in practice, but there’s still a part of me that draws a deep connection with them. Today, I approach Easter knowing the music of the season will especially convey its magnificent, covenant and life changing truths. Jesus, the perfect, complete, eternal sacrifice has conquered death, once, for all time. The curtain in the Temple has been torn in two, from top to bottom, symbolically giving mankind access to our Creator and Sovereign God. And the musicians and congregations triumphantly echo the words spoken at an empty tomb, “He is not here!! He is risen!!”
This Easter though I knew our celebration would be even more different. Our family was unable to gather on the Sunday, although we gathered earlier in the week. There were no sunrise services, but there were still services of celebration, but beyond that, it seemed the day would be quiet. Until......... My youngest son was visiting from New York City, staying with the middle son who had a work day on the Sunday. So Jon suggested we go to the gravesite of his uncle, my brother, who had passed away just before Christmas. Jon was with us for Tommy’s funeral, but he hadn’t yet seen the headstone given to him at the National Cemetery in honor of his military background. My heart was full as we left the service at our church, and drove to pick up Jon. We headed to the National Cemetery, planning to also go to the historic cemetery in downtown Charleston to remember too our infant daughter, Tonia, whose ashes were placed there many years ago in memory of her very short life on earth. God was doing what I never expected that Easter Sunday. My emptiness was beginning to shout, “He is not here!! He is risen!!” But there was a strong awareness too that echoed the truth of Scripture. Because He is risen, Tommy is risen!! And then again, because He is risen, Tonia is risen!!
I had already shared with a friend that morning that her husband who had prematurely passed away just a few months ago, Jesus is alive, and Justin is alive!! Justin’s life had been an incredible reflection of the God he loved and served. And now, like Tommy and Tonia, Justin too is alive, and the joy of the resurrection, the hope and peace of the resurrection, was flooding my spirit as it never had before. “He is not here!! He is risen!!”
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit. So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.
And it’s all because, “He is not here!! He is risen!!”
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-8)
