Easter

A Burst of Springtime!

March 14, 2019 by Nancy 14 Comments

As we dig out from a blizzard here in Colorado I’m longing for the early signs of Spring I remember as a child. Each year in late February or early March my dad would come into the kitchen of our Tennessee home carrying long branches he had cut off the forsythia bush in our side yard. To my sisters and me the branches looked just as lifeless as all the others on the trees and bushes outside, but Dad placed them in a vase of warm water on the windowsill.

The next day, we would marvel at the tiny buds beginning to appear. Within three days the branches would be alive with radiant yellow flowers! Although it might still be gray and gloomy outside, we had a burst of sunshine in our kitchen window, and a promise that Spring was on the way.

How can we bring that kind of springtime into the hearts and lives of people we know? We can do it literally, by forcing bulbs and delivering a basket of blooming tulips or hyacinths to a friend having a long winter of the soul. Or by planning a visit to a botanic garden where she can breathe in the sights and smells of a green spring long before it’s in full bloom in her neighborhood.

We can also bring springtime feelings into the souls of others, especially older adults, by helping them remember times in their childhood that were carefree and happy, or by listening patiently as they share fond memories of loved ones lost and days gone by.

Or maybe it’s the more permanent message of springtime renewal that we hope to deliver, one that will have long-lasting, even eternal effects. Martin Luther wrote, “Our Lord has written the promise of the Resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf of springtime.”

Let the crocuses pushing their way through the late snows, followed by the tulips standing tall and the trees covered in bright green leaves, be the signs we need to remind us that Easter is coming! Easter, the day where believers everywhere celebrate the truth of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

So if, like the yellow forsythia, you deliver a burst of springtime to someone this year, consider adding a message of eternal hope. Remind them that Easter is coming! It could be just the encouragement they need.

An Easter People

March 27, 2018 by Nancy 16 Comments

One of my favorite quotes is from St. Augustine and reads, “We are an Easter people and alleluia is our song!” I love it because it speaks not only to the joy we can have when celebrating Resurrection Sunday, but also to the abundant life that those who believe in the risen Lord can have all year long.

We are an Easter people when we count our blessings and realize we can never get to the end of the list. Alleluia!

We are an Easter people when we gather together and praise the Lord. Alleluia!

We are an Easter people when we open God’s Word to see what encouragement, correction or advice He has for us each day. So we lift up our alleluias before we intervene in prayer for people we love.

We are also an Easter people when we get bad news about a friend or loved one’s diagnosis, or a scary report from our own doctor. Even through our fears we can sing alleluia because of Jesus’ promise in John 16:33: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

We are an Easter people when we grieve. A parent, spouse, sibling, or child dies, and we wonder how we will get through the next few days and the rest of our lives. How will we even be able to speak at the memorial service if that is required of us? Then we remember the Lord promised in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” We experience that grace descending upon us to comfort us, strengthen us, and be the wind beneath our wings. And so somehow we still sing alleluia—even with a lump in our throats.

Yes, Easter people grieve, but not like those who have no hope because we have the promise of eternal life. Jesus said in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Alleluia indeed!

If you aren’t yet one of the Easter people, could this be the Easter that you explore who Jesus is and become one? It’s so easy. Simply believe that Jesus is the Son of God, acknowledge that you are a sinner in need of a Savior (as are we all), and ask the risen Lord to forgive you and come into your heart. When you do, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will be yours immediately, and a permanent song of alleluia will begin to echo in your soul.

As C.S. Lewis said, Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. (Jesus didn’t leave the “good guy” option open to us.) If this is the first Easter you proclaim him Lord, it will be a wonderful celebration for you here—and the angels will celebrate in heaven, too!

“A Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot,” St. Augustine also said. Christians don’t get everything right. We need forgiveness as much as anyone. And grace. And mercy. But no matter what, “We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song!”

Blessed by Bunnies

April 13, 2017 by Nancy 15 Comments

Since the time I was a very little girl watching them scamper around our grassy yard in East Tennessee, stopping only to munch on clover stems, I have loved those “wascally wabbits” also known as bunnies. In junior high school I actually raised rabbits, showing them in the Tennessee State Fair. I even served briefly as secretary of the Smoky Mountain Rabbit Breeders Association!

As Easter approaches our grandchildren know that the bunnies burrowed in storage bins most of the year will soon be hopping into position all around our house—joining the year-round bunnies on display. We have bunny bands, bunny families, and even an Easter egg tree with bunny ornaments. Bunnies, bunnies everywhere!

Of course, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I know that Easter is only about His glorious Resurrection. It’s about how He came to earth to close the gap between us and His Heavenly Father. It’s about how believers can exchange a life of sin for an eternal life with God! I know all that to be true, and I’m grateful to my soul for the true meaning of Easter. I would never begin to idolize or worship the Easter Bunny, but I’m hoping it’s OK to adore God’s fuzzy creatures that dart across the path in front of me on my walks, stopping just long enough to twitch an ear or wiggle a nose in my direction.

I’ve learned a lot from bunnies—including the facts of life after I ran to my grandmother crying, “one of my rabbits is playing too rough with the other one!” In my book Simply the Savior, I wrote about learning to abide by watching the little rabbit that lived in an overgrown juniper at the end of our driveway. Every morning when I opened the drapes to look out she would be nibbling dew-covered grass. But if the golden retriever next door came galloping by, or the wind and rain came up, the little rabbit would quickly retreat to her bush where she was safe. Seeing her abide in the bush helped me understand how Jesus wants us to abide in Him (John 15:4).

Many authors have personified bunnies. I decorated my grandchild nursery in prints and fabric depicting Beatrix Potter’s beloved Peter Rabbit and his friends. One year I read the novel Watership Down, a fictitious account of life in a rabbit warren, while riding a train through the British countryside. Gazing out the window I couldn’t help but fantasize that the bunnies I was reading about were out there somewhere.

Yet bunnies are just charming, sometimes aggravating (why do they eat just one bite of each ripe strawberry?) creatures. I believe God made them in part for our pleasure, so let it be to His glory that we enjoy them at Easter.

Which leads me to wonder if bunnies could have been present at the Cross. When the ground shook and the sky turned darker than dark, did they scurry under a rosemary bush for protection? Maybe they also watched from a distance that bright, early morning of the third day as the women ran to the tomb only to find it empty. We can only imagine…and be blessed.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
–Cecil F. Alexander

The Easter Cactus

March 23, 2016 by Nancy 14 Comments

My Christmas cactus is blooming for Easter this year! The botanical explanation may be that we moved to a new house and it’s reacting to different light exposure. But a more sacred reason comes to mind whenever I gaze its way.

How appropriate that a Christmas cactus would bloom at Easter to remind us that the two holy celebrations are intrinsically connected…inseparable in fact. For Christians, Christmas and Easter only exist because of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who dwelled among us. Had He not come to earth, we would have no resurrection to celebrate. Had He not given Himself to die on the cross, we would have no reason to acknowledge His arrival. Without Easter, Christmas is just a materialistic season of overspending and overeating. Without Christmas, Easter is just an extravagant brunch with a lot of candy and brightly colored eggs. One loses all meaning without the other.

Is there value in gathering together with friends and family over the Christmas season to exchange gifts and restore relationships? Of course there is. Is there value in rejoicing in the arrival of spring and celebrating all that’s fresh and new with fluffy chicks and rabbits? Of course there is.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to decorate for Christmas. I also love rabbits, and have decorative ones all over my house at Easter time. The danger is in letting all the trappings of either holiday obscure the message that can transform us not twice a year, but each day and forever.

Nowhere is that message more clearly stated than in God’s Word and by Jesus Himself. In John 3:16-17 Jesus taught, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Always clear about His mission, Jesus comforted his grieving friend Martha by saying, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lies and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

He was sent in love. He died in love. He was resurrected and lives forever. And because He lives, so do those who believe in Him. It’s as simple as that. Jesus Christ always was and always will be. Christmas and Easter are merely the bookends of His sinless earthly life, but to celebrate one without the other makes no sense at all.

My Christmas cactus is so grateful for life that it just had to bloom this Easter! May the same be said of us. Have a joyful Easter—and look for opportunities to bloom!

The Good News of Easter

April 2, 2015 by Nancy 11 Comments

This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.—1 John 4:9

How astounding it is that the good news of Easter is not just to bring us comfort when someone we love dies, or when we ourselves are preparing to pass over into eternity in heaven. The good news of Easter is that once we believe in Jesus Christ we are already living an eternal life—right here on earth.

If we really grasped this truth, wouldn’t it completely transform the way we live out each and every day? When a friend disappointed us when we needed her most, we’d be able to forgive her much more quickly with an eternal perspective. When we felt our bones creaking as we got out of bed, we’d think of those creaks as the normal shortcomings of temporary housing—not part of our eternal state of being.

I once read a touching account of a family learning to live without the daily presence of their husband and father who died while serving with the U.S. Army in Iraq. The soldier’s four-year-old son repeatedly heard, over the period of a few days, that his dad was now in heaven. Finally he asked the only logical question: “Then why don’t we just go there and pick him up?”

Unfortunately it’s not that easy to physically span the distance between our earthly existence and our eternal home, but we can find great comfort in accepting the truth that we live one life in Christ—whether here or there, we are alive because He died on the cross for us, and rose again from the dead on Easter morning.

Paul wrote in Romans 5:1-2: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. What comfort in knowing we are NOW standing in God’s grace, right in the middle of His will for our lives. No longer separated from God by our sin, we are forgiven through Christ’s death on the cross for us.

On Easter Sunday when we sing our favorite hymns and glory in the truth of the good news of Easter, may we also pledge anew to live every day of the coming year as people who are already living an eternal life. Let’s say along with St. Augustine, “We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song!” Happy Easter!

Excerpted from THE HOPE OF GLORY lesson on “Easter Joy.” So blessed to share it with 7 assisted living residents this week. We raised the roof of the assisted living facility singing “He Lives!”

Sunrise Hope at Easter

April 17, 2014 by Nancy 12 Comments

No wonder so many people love to attend Easter sunrise services. A sunrise represents hope, and so it is the perfect representation of the hope we find in the message of Easter.

Few events can be counted on to occur day after day, but the rising of the sun is one of them. Even on a cloudy day, when the heat and light of the sun may be minimized, we can still see that the sun did indeed rise once again!

And how grateful we are for the blessing of the sun in our lives. Without it, we would be in perpetual darkness. Without it, plant life on the earth, including the flowers and trees that bring us so much joy, would shrivel and die. All the beauty we look forward to this time of year when spring begins to bloom would cease to exist. In fact, all of life would eventually disappear from the earth, all because we lost the sun.

Our life on earth is marked by the number of sunrises and sunsets we experience, but do we really experience them? Do we appreciate the sun and the majesty of the Creation that allows it to shine day after day, or do we take it for granted? The first rays of a sunrise are subtle at best. Slowly the darkness begins to fade as the sun makes its way toward the horizon, but then as the giant orb of fire climbs up into view the entire sky changes color. The sunrise can look different each and every day, but because we can count on it to happen without fail, it’s a wonderful symbol for the hope we have in Jesus Christ—the hope that is an anchor for the soul, firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19).

It was a dark, bleak day when Jesus was crucified on the cross—the worst day His followers had ever known. And yet when the grieving women ran to the tomb early in the morning of the third day, after the sun had risen, they were greeted with the glorious news of the resurrection! Praise God we can be sure that those who believe in His Son will also know the glory of everlasting life. We can be even more certain of that than we are of the sunrise! For no matter what darkness our life holds, one day we will be bathed in the light of heaven forever.

The next time we are blessed to watch a sunrise, and especially on Easter morning, we should bask in the hope that it represents. It’s a hope that never fades, and never disappoints.