Of all the holidays people have made to celebrate, I can think of no day or event more worthy of our remembrance than the day we now call Easter. It is the longest celebrated event in history. Since the days of Adam and Eve, people have looked forward with a hope that there would be more to life than death. People have hoped for a way to be saved from mortality. Those who sought after God, willing to be obedient to all His laws, found Him and were promised that a Savior would provide a way to overcome heartache, pain, and even death.
In the time of Moses, a people found themselves in inescapable bondage. They were warned that a scourge would come and slay the children of the land, but all hope was not lost. A feast was proclaimed in celebration of the deliverance they had not yet witnessed. Each family would sacrifice a lamb, pure and unblemished, perfect and whole. Through the blood of the lamb, deliverance would come and the scourge would pass over them.
That symbolic spring event of thousands of years ago, the Passover, was a witness of the power and love of God, the precursor to our Easter celebration. For when God sent His own Son, as a pure and innocent lamb to the earth, He again promised deliverance from bondage and life to those that would listen and choose the higher law that He offered. Jesus was the long awaited Christ or Messiah. He was sent to save us from the bondage of our own bad choices, allowing us an opportunity to change our ways and be forgiven that we might be pure through His sacrifice. He took our punishment, He bore our pains, with the hope that we would choose to walk with Him rather than be left to ourselves. He came to lift us up from our fallen ways and offer us a more glorious existence.
There were those that chose not to listen. There were those that refused to be told how to live. During the celebrations of Passover, they took Him, they mocked Him, they beat Him, and they killed Him. Perhaps they thought that by rejecting God, they would not be subject to His laws, as if they had power to save themselves. But their cruel act only showed their lack of understanding. For, on the third day Jesus showed that He had power even over death and rose from the dead, never to die again. He was seen by Mary, by the apostles, and by hundreds of His disciples. He visited the people on the American continents who recorded what they saw. He visited other believers around the world to show that He is not only the Savior of the Jews, but of the whole world.
Today we continue to celebrate the deliverance from bondage that God has promised. Deliverance from our own mistakes, or sins, and deliverance from death. Could any celebration fully express the joy of conquering death, of being able to be reunited with loved ones that have passed? Truly this is the greatest of all holidays, a day to remember that God sent His Son, that whosoever should believe on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. It is the celebration of the joy and hope of Christianity.
Happy Easter.
