Experience Hope: Easter 2010

A young pastor was invited into the home of a woman who was dying from cancer. She was only 47 years old. The pastor felt awkward, unsure what he could possibly offer in such a situation. He later realized it was not what he had to offer but what God had sent him there to learn. The young woman's mother was taking care of her daughter. As the pastor was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of coffee, the mother came in, dropped the tray she was carrying and crumpled to the ground. Her head in her hands, she kept repeating the same thing over and over again. I wish I could die in her place. I wish I could save her. I wish I could die in her place.

That is what love looks like. It's allowing your heart to be broken over love for another. It's sacrifice and struggle. It's standing up for what is right, putting another's needs above our own. It's more than Hallmark cards or friendly smiles. We know love by this, that God first loved us. That's what love looks like...a man washing the feet of his disciples, the Savior touching people considered untouchable, the Son of God, stretched out on a cross dying in our place.

And that is what the Three Days – Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday – are all about. It is an experience in love. There are times in our lives when we feel like the forces of death will always win: when we lose someone we love, when drugs or alcohol take over, when buying more and needing more consumes our lives and our resources, when depression and brokenness seem insurmountable. These are our Good Friday moments. But we have more than the mourning of Good Friday — we have the promise of joy on Easter Morning! The Easter promise is that death no longer has the final say – we celebrate the return of hope to the world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That is the love God has for us, a love that feeds our hope and strengthens our weary souls. It is a love that once experienced, lives within us...crying to break out. Wanting to be shared. Dying to live. Do not doubt that that love is inside you ... don't listen to the voices that call you unlovable. Don't fall prey to the insidious doubts that insist it's too hard.

That love is there. It's there every time you put another's needs before your own, without expecting anything in return. It's there every time you care for a stranger, without question. It's there every time you go out of your way to care for this planet God has entrusted to us. When you reach out in love, when you give part of yourself to make someone else whole, when you look into the eyes of your neighbor and see a child of God, it's there. That is what love looks like — that is what the resurrection looks like. And it exists because God said it was so...and so it is.

This year, open yourself to journey with Jesus through the unknown deserts of your life into the hope that only Easter morning can bring. May God bless you now and always.