Christ Is Risen!Sample

After Easter By: Tripp Prince With a few weeks of separation, Easter Sunday may already feel like a distant memory. Perhaps you find your heart and mind already moving on to other ideas, themes, or discussions. Yet in the Christian life, we never move on from the resurrection! We never find ourselves content with our worship of Jesus, and so we continue to sit with the mystery and power of the resurrection. We believe that 2,000 years ago Jesus truly died, and three days later a dead man took a breath, and that breath changed the course of history itself. As a celebration of the resurrection, seek out joyful ways to incorporate feasting into your rhythm of life. We feast today as a sign pointing to the ultimate feast we will one day know in the Kingdom of God. Just like the Israelites of old, we hold out hope for the feast the Lord is preparing for his people, and that future hope gives meaning, purpose, and endurance to the trials and challenges we face today. We choose to feast today even in the face of pain and loss and sorrow, not because we ignore our troubles, but because we choose to say they do not have the final word! When we choose to feast, we say to the world and to ourselves that seasons of darkness give way to seasons of light. Lent gives way to Easter. Death is destroyed by the resurrection. Easter feasting doesn’t mean your reality changes overnight, but it is a way to show that through Christ you find the strength and courage to hold on to hope even in the face of very real, acute pain. Where have your present-day challenges caused you to lose sight of your future hope and joy? It is so easy to be consumed by our circumstances that we fail to allow the hope of heaven to rush in and reorient our perspective and posture. To think about and long for the coming Kingdom of God isn’t a form of escapism or blind optimism. It is the most practical and immediately helpful thing you can do! Holding fast to the hope of the resurrection gives you the courage to walk down any road, no matter how difficult or impossible it may seem at the time. The resurrection of Jesus means there is always the hope of a new day, and therefore a way forward for us as we embody this hope in every area of life.