To Live is Christ

I have wanted to post something all weekend. So many thoughts but I can't seem to put them to writing. It is now 10 o'clock on Easter Sunday night as I try to formulate some sense of the ramblings that take place in my head. But to get us started I will share this with you:



 A beauty, huh? My heart yearns for the showing of God's splendor and boy did He deliver tonight. I took this photo at Mina Lake this evening.  

Not only is this sunset breathtaking, it is a reminder that this day now rests so a new one may begin. All this day's burdens, the memories, the emotions, the laughter, the ins and outs of it, lay to rest now as the sun sets, signaling the hands of creation that tomorrow is due. 

"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:21,22) 

Because He loves us so much, our lives are not consumed by the things that seem consuming. We do not have to be consumed. He gives us newness every day. His compassion, or translated from the Hebrew, His mercy, tenderness, sensitive love, begins anew with the rising of the sun each day. That is a promise we can count on. I have lived approximately 16,873 days and have yet to see one of those days where the sun did not rise. So when God promises us new mercies every morning, He delivers. We are never without a new morning.

Amen? Amen.

Now on to my other thought.....

Have you ever wondered what day 2 of this Easter weekend was like? When you look at a calendar, day 2, or Saturday, is blank. Empty. No name. No significance. 

Friday is Good. Sunday is Easter. Saturday is nothing. 

It must have been so quiet that day some 2000 years ago. For those who despised Jesus and wanted Him dead, He was gone. For those who loved Him, He was gone. It was eerily silent, I am sure. The Feast of Passover had come and gone. The Feast of Unleavened Bread had begun and so it was a Sabbath. All was still. No work. No travel. Silence.

And on that second day, Jesus lay in the tomb. Yet to be risen, His body lay still and with it those life changing promises that would burst forth on the third day and change the world forever. For in Him, as He lay, was a new covenant of hope, a word called grace, an action known as mercy, a love that never separates, a new set of commandments to love your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and then to love your neighbor as yourself, compassion that never fails, hope that never dies, life everlasting. All encompassed in His body that lay in the tomb....until...

Up from the grave He arose. And with Him, a life anew for all who put their trust in Him. Now we must walk as He walked. He died, layed in the tomb, and rose again to bring us life...not only eternal life but a new way of life on this earth.

Do you share the new covenant of hope? Are you practicing grace? Do you show mercy by your actions? Are you a lover of God with everything in you? Have you loved your neighbor as yourself? Can you show compassion when someone does not deserve it? 

That silent second day held these things with it...but only for one day. At dawn that followed,Christ and all He embodied, lay in the tomb no longer. Oh no! He had risen. And everything changed. No longer the law but grace. And a new way to live...for all of us.

Oh to be like Jesus. I just want to be like Him.

"For to me, to live is Christ...." (Philippians 1:21)