Each year at this time, retail stores all over the country stock their shelves and racks with fancy baskets, plastic eggs, chocolate bunnies, and brightly colored dresses, hats, and suits, as millions of people prepare to celebrate the Easter holiday. Easter, like Christmas, has become a huge affair, with egg hunts, visits from and to the Easter Bunny, and one of the few days of the year when more people visit their local houses of worship – Easter Sunday!
I suppose there is nothing wrong with all the festivities and fun events that go on during this time of year, but like Christmas, I wonder if all the commercialism hasn’t taken away and downplayed the importance of what Easter is really a celebration of.
If we stop and think about it, the events that we celebrate with the week leading up to Easter Sunday and our sunrise services, are the most important events that have ever taken place in the history of mankind.
The birth of Jesus Christ that we celebrate at Christmas was an important and glorious event, but without the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we would have no hope. There would be no salvation, and we would be lost forever. In that regard, the celebration of Easter is the celebration of a glorious victory! A victory over sin. A victory over Satan. And, a victory over death! When we stop and seriously think about it, how miserable, how lost, and how hopeless we would be if Christ hadn’t died and rose again for our sin. He paid a penalty we could never pay – the penalty for our sin and for the sin of the entire world!
Easter to us who believe in Him should be the most glorious and wonderful of all events! As we stop to remember and reflect on what happened that week over two thousand years ago – it should so fill our hearts with joy and gladness. To think that the Son of God loved us enough to die for our sins, so that we through faith in Him might experience new life, is the greatest victory that has ever been won! Jesus own words “It is finished!” as He died there on the cross should give us great joy, great hope, and great peace! And then three days later as He rose victorious from the grave – the battle was over! Victory is ours…we simply must believe in Him!
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) ESV