The Days in Between

This day in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday...  I always think of the disciples, devastated and grieving, beyond heartbroken.

They didn't know that it had been a "good" Friday...the beginning of freedom from the chains of sin.  It just looked like the end of all their hopes and dreams.  They didn't know that in one more day their world would be turned completely right side up, that they would burst with a joy that could not be contained, that all of history would shift on its axis, that a revolution would be launched.

There's been a theme running through my posts of late about the waiting time between the promise and the fulfilment.

It's the not knowing that can become our undoing.  Not knowing when/if the waiting will ever end.

The disciples didn't know what we know...

The ability to hold on comes from remembering what we know.

While you wait...for the long hard things...when your faith is absolutely stretched...peer into the empty tomb.  Gaze at the neatly folded cloth that wrapped His head.  Breathe deeply of the sweet scents that anointed Him.  His is risen!!  Death did not and cannot prevail.  Darkness has never and will never overcome Light.

Remember the empty tomb!

The Spirit of God,

who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.

And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead,

he will give life to your mortal bodies

by this same Spirit living within you.

Romans 8:11

The Amaryllis

I have an amaryllis that I cut back every year after it blooms.  I put it in my root cellar until the next winter when I get it out and begin to water it.  This year it started to grow before I brought it out.

In the pitch dark.

Without water.

It's like it couldn't help itself--it just had to grow.

Now in these bleak, short winter days it sits on my table--glowing, vibrant and alive.  It is whispering mysteries that my heart grasps with hope, though my brain hardly comprehends.

This flower has grown from a corruptible seed--a seed that will really and truly die someday--and yet its life seems unquenchable.  How much more the life that's been planted inside me that is eternal and will never die?

Sometimes I don't feel very alive...  I'm mostly just trying to keep my head above water and this worries me...

However, what we feel isn't always the truth.

The truth is that His life makes us alive, it cannot be defeated.  Its glory cannot be contained.

The blazing red flower shouts of life and reminds me that it is the One who began the good work in my life who will finish it!  It whispers of rest--that He's got it all in His hands, Author and Finisher.  His Life within me will live and grow even in weary times or times of struggle.

For you have been born again,

but not to a life that will quickly end. 

Your new life will last forever because

it comes from the eternal, living word of God.

1 Peter 1:23

He is Risen!

He is risen!! It's all about hope.

"It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he lived in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!" Romans 8:11

Read it again. And again. It's all about hope. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is in you. He was dead. No heartbeat. His body mangled and torn. And the Spirit of God made Him alive again. That same power "lives and breathes in you". That power is greater than any darkness. Greater than fear, anger, depression, anxiety, strife, division, addiction, sickness...you name it--He is greater and He lives in you!!

If you don't feel it today, if your heart is weary and discouraged, call on Him. Praise Him. Declare that He is Lord. Don't let go of Him until you see the freedom you long for. It's been paid for and it's yours!

He is risen!!

For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many.
But even greater is God's wonderful grace
and his gift of righteousness,
for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death
through this one man, Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:17