Easter was yesterday. Or, if you are a Christian, yesterday was “Resurrection Sunday.” We put on our beautiful Easter dresses. Our husbands wear some type of button-down shirt (usually of the plaid variety). If you are like me, you finally get your boys out of athletic gear and into shorts that actually button. All three of my kids wore collared shirts (gasp). My youngest kept calling his collar his “over coat.” I can’t even. He’s adorable. We go through the rig-a-ma-roll of all the Easter traditions moving through the motions without being moved. This year, however, I was moved.

Our world is in a constant state of turmoil. The earth seems to be waning in pain most of the time. Our rest comes in distress and it doesn’t seem there is and end anywhere near. We’ve gotten used to living in the turbulence instead of resting in the grace.

Something about this state of being has us living more in Good Friday and less in Resurrection Sunday. We talk a lot about the “trials of many kinds” (James 1) we will face in this lifetime. If you watch the news, you see that we live in the negative. There isn’t much positive reporting these days. Not on TV or in our lives. Misery loves company and we are keeping it company something fierce.

What I am finding, however, is that we live because of death. Rebekah Lyons says, “Death is the gateway to life.” Christ’s death and resurrection gives life to our weary souls. Through death, we live eternally.

Death = Life

We need to start living in Resurrection Sunday remembering Good Friday. When we pitch a tent and move into the horror of Good Friday, we don’t give glory where it is deserved: to God. The same is true for our lives. We will always have “deaths.” It is a part of this life. However, with every death comes life and it is time we start celebrating this.

You are alive. You are breathing. It is time to start living. Can this life be difficult? Absolutely. Yet, there is so much beauty to be celebrated from the victory of those hard times. The more we recognize His goodness, even in the hard, the more we can celebrate and remember euphoria of Resurrection Sunday.

It is time to pull ourselves out of the pit of despair. The resurrection is for us every day not just one Sunday a year. It is time we celebrate His goodness because it is there. Every day. Even in the hard. Even in the mundane.

“With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all” Acts 4:33

He is resurrected. His grace is powerfully at work in you and I. Now that’s something to celebrate!

Love & Blessings,

Meg