On Easter Sunday, a young man sang a song that repeated a phrase that has stayed with me all week: Everything must die, to rise again. Not sure if that’s the exact wording, but that’s the idea.

We celebrated resurrection on that day–have you been celebrating it this week, all week, every day? We can do that! Our old lives are dead; Christ has given each of us a new life.

The amazing truth is that in this new life, we are to become like Christ himself, like God, created again, born again, given new life by the Holy Spirit.

Peter gives us a glimpse of what God has planned for His children. (Remember him? the one who ran away in cowardice when someone suggested he was a friend of Jesus’?)—

May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.

By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

There’s so much in this passage: knowing God and Jesus brings grace and peace, His power gives us everything we need to live as He wants us to live.

And none of those things are promises for some far-off, eternal day. They are promises for now.

But the real zinger for me is … Wow… did you catch this? You have God’s promises that you can share His divine nature! The corrupt, worldly nature that you inherited can be put to death, and you are reborn to a new life.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

And Hebrews 12:10 talks about us sharing in His holiness. Wow.

Will you believe that, beloved child of God? Will you believe that the old you is dead, that you’ve been given a new life to share in our Lord’s divine nature and holiness? Do you believe that the Spirit is changing you into the image of Christ?

And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

The Greek word used here that we translate “changed” means “to change fundamentally and completely from one state to another.” Wow. Changed from ME to HIM.

I know exactly what some of you are thinking… I know, because I’ve thought or said it myself. “I am so far from being God’s masterpiece … I’d like to be, but those old, ugly habits still rise up sometimes … I have those days when I am everything but holy … I am so far from what God wants me to be … ”

Yet God says that your old self can be put to death and you can have a new nature and new life. I believe it’s all part of His plan to redeem and reclaim us. He created us in His image to have a relationship with Him. We corrupted and ruined that. But whatever we have been in the past, is now being created anew and changed into his glorious image.

God says this is what He is doing in your life.

Will you believe Him?

Spirit, help our unbelief!

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Scripture: 1 Peter 1:2-4, Ephesians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 3:18b (all NLT)

I imagine Jesus smiling often to himself and enjoying the moments of this day, the moments when his friends suddenly see Him alive.

He had told them His death would not be final, but how could they have understood? Now they are convinced He’s dead; His body was taken off the cross and placed in a tomb. Some of them had watched him die, had seen the burial.

They’re grieving, in despair, in hiding. Then He comes back to the ones He loves, sometimes meeting them individually, sometimes in a group. And now, they must believe. John says, They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord!

Today I read all four accounts of the events of that morning. Mary’s encounter with Jesus touched my heart.

She’s gone to the tomb, but the body is gone. This last loss is just too much, too overwhelming. She weeps out of grief and frustration. The New Living Translation says,

She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her.

Oh! Did you hear the love in that question?

He says her name, and she knows Him immediately.

I can imagine Jesus taking great delight in returning to His loved ones, in watching the despair vanish and joy and belief finally light up their faces. And He knows He has good news for them. They don’t realize yet what all He has done for them, what He has in store for them … but He knows.

I’m thinking of the many times the gospels say Jesus was troubled, the many times He grieved, the agony He suffered as He knew what He must go through. But now, it is over! He came to earth to die, and His work is now finished. He has beaten death and darkness, not only for Himself but for everyone who chooses Him.

The disciples were overjoyed to see their Lord alive. And is it so difficult to believe that He was overjoyed on this day, too? He has come back to His disciples victorious. He took the terrible punishment for all mankind’s transgressions against God, and He flung open the way to the Father, the way to life.

He has good news for all who love Him. And I think He must have smiled to Himself a lot, on that first day of resurrection.

I hope that on this Resurrection Day, He comes to you, calls your name in His great love, and gives you a glimpse of what He has done and what He has given you.

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Scripture: John 20:14-15, 20:20 (NLT)

What a day that must have been! Try to imagine yourself there.

You might have been a follower of the Teacher who is now being nailed to a cross and hung there to die. You are in shock and disbelief; you are seeing everything you’d hoped for crumble and disappear. And maybe you are afraid of what is now going to happen to you.

Or maybe you are one of the mob that spewed the anger and hate, hoping to wipe this man and his influence off the face of the earth and finally silence all of the unsettling teachings and ideas that have been floating around for the last three years.

You might have simply been a traveler, knowing nothing about what was happening but caught in the city as events unfolded, hearing rumors and talk about a man being condemned to die today.

But what a day! At noon, the sun is obliterated and darkness falls. No one can explain it, and there’s panic and confusion. A few hours later, an earthquake splits open the earth. Bodies rise from graves and walk about in the city. What a day.

And if you were in the temple that afternoon, especially if you were a priest, you would have been stunned as the heavy, high, thick curtain that hid the place called the Holy of Holies suddenly ripped apart, from the top to the bottom.

That curtain had been in place for generations, ever since God had given the children of Israel instructions on building a tabernacle where they would worship Him. The Holy of Holies behind the curtain was the place where only one priest could enter and approach the presence of God. When he entered, everything must conform to the prescribed instructions—everything, right down to his underwear.

The priest entered once a year to present a sacrifice that was to cleanse the people from the guilt of their sins, to purify them so they would be acceptable to worship the Almighty. Men who had entered at the wrong time or in the wrong way had died, struck down by the hand of God.

Now that curtain was ripping, tearing apart, from the top to the bottom! An impossibility! That curtain was so heavy and so high, it was more immoveable than a wall. And now it was tearing in two.

I’ve often wondered … was it a quick, fast rip, like lightening splitting the air? Or a slow dissolving of the embroidered threads as the curtain sagged and collapsed?

However it happened, the barrier between God and man was torn down at the moment Jesus breathed his last.

The final sacrifice has been made.

For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place.

And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean…

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Scripture: Mark 15:37-38, Hebrews 10:10,19-22 (NLT) Read more in Hebrews 9:1-15, Hebrews 10:1-25

Yes, it truly is. A little soggy, maybe, but washed and so … hopeful, don’t you think? A beautiful spring morning!

 On days like this, the music in my head (or would it be my heart?) starts automatically, and I hear a song that’s stayed with me since ‘way back in my childhood Bible School times, This is the day that the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it …

And this reminds me of something I’ve been wishing for, something I’ve wanted to ask my music-tuned friends to do: Please write a new song for the verse before “This is the day…”

The words for “This is the day” come from Psalm 118:24. But take a look at verse 23:

This is the LORD’s doing,
   and it is wonderful to see.

Oh! If only I had a catchy little tune for these words!

This would be a song for those times when God’s fingerprints are all over my day.

When something happens that leaves me almost speechless because it was just so impossible, except for the One with whom nothing is impossible.

When God takes something meant for evil and makes it into something good.

When I see evidence that the Spirit is healing terrible things within that cripple and enslave.

When somehow the day brings exactly what my soul needs.

When my enemies do their best to kill me, but the LORD rescues me (Psalm 118:13).

When I catch a glimpse of what it means that Jesus has snatched me from the kingdom of darkness and placed me in His kingdom of light.

When I take the bread and the cup, and remember the price He paid for what I have done. 

When I am so grateful for this new life I’m living.

Then I want to sing this song.

This is the LORD’s doing,
   and it is wonderful to see.

So … how long will it take you to write that tune?

The LORD is God, shining upon us.   (Psalm 118:27)

Amen.

My eyes finally open, just as the red numbers on the alarm clock blink to warn me that one more minute of my morning is gone.

On most days, by the time I open my eyes, my dreams have evaporated and I have no memory of the places and times my mind has visited while my body rested.

But for the last three or four nights, I’ve had dreams that intertwine the past and the present, dreams that feel as though time has dissolved. I’ve been walking around my days in a curious state of mind, thinking about this organization of our lives into what we call Time.

Or maybe my mind is tugging at the veil between the spiritual and the earthly, the mortal. The apostle Paul says we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror.

I’m thinking of a frosted windshield, on a cold winter morning, that I do not defrost completely before leaving my driveway. I peer through a small opening in the frost, concentrating on one narrow portion of road right in front of me; the rest of the world is blocked from my sight. And even that small lens to the world sometimes fogs over as my warm breath condenses on the glass, and I must wipe away the cloudiness. That’s a fair description of how we mortals see.

I cannot tell you where my life will go today. And many times, I wonder if I even understand the past, the years I have lived. I cannot explain how God can be outside of time. I do not know how the Spirit of God lives within me. I cannot comprehend how God can know what I have not yet lived. I cannot understand … oh, so many, many things.

The one thing I do know is that I can say to my Father, I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands. When it is impossible for me to see more than a tiny glimpse, when I have no power over tomorrow, when I have many questions with no answers … I take comfort in knowing that the Almighty God claims me as his own.

Jesus knew his life on this earth was almost over. In the few hours he had left, he tried to prepare his disciples and comfort them. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he told them. “Trust in God, and trust also in me. I am going away, but I’ll be back. And you know the way to where I am going.”

If I would have been in that room, I can imagine the panic I would have felt.

What? He’s leaving? What’s happening? This is not what I had planned, not what I’d hoped for. Not what I signed up for when I left my other life behind. And he says we know the way to wherever he’s going? I have no idea what he’s talking about.

And Jesus still says to me today, as he did to his disciples then, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father, except through me.

He does not give an answer to their frantic questions. Instead he says, “If you belong to me, then you have the way, you have truth, and you have life.

“If you belong to me, then you belong to the Father. This is how to live, not by answering all the questions, but by trusting God and trusting me.”

The most crucial question of your life is, To whom do you belong?

And to that question, child of God, there is an answer.

Scriptures: 1 Cor 13:12 (NLT), Psalm 31:14 (NIV), John 14:1,4, 6 (NLT)