“In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it . . . .”   Are YOU ready for Easter?  It takes more than a new frilly bonnet!  It takes more than a new suit, a new shirt, a new dress, a new tie, new shoes, a flowery corsage.  It takes a Believing, Receiving, Rejoicing Heart!

Easter is about New Life!  Easter is about Resurrection!  Easter is about Believing the Impossible, Receiving the Unlikely, Rejoicing in the Un-heard-of!  A dead Man alive again?!?!  Impossible!  Unlikely!  Un-heard-of!  That’s JESUS!!!  Born in a stable and placed in a manger.  Lived in an insignificant town and nailed to a Roman cross.   Buried in a borrowed tomb.  Not much of a resume!  BUT – the manger became a Manger, the town became a Town, the cross became a Cross, and the tomb, even, became a Tomb because it was found to be empty!  Jesus rose from the dead.  He died – that’s for sure.  He’s now Alive – and that’s, indeed, FOR SURE!  What if He were still dead?  What if He never walked out of that tomb?

Here are some Thoughts from I Corinthians 15:

1. [vss. 14, 15] If the Resurrection is not true, Christian preaching is vain.
2. [vss. 14, 17] If the Resurrection is not true, the Christian faith is in vain à HEY – I’d be out of a job!
3. [vs. 17] If the Resurrection is not true, believers in and followers of Christ are still lost and dead in their sins. (Ro. 3:23; 6:23a)
4. [vs. 18] The dead in Christ have no hope if the Resurrection is not true.
5. [vs. 19] Without the Resurrection being true, our hope is limited to this life and we are of all men most miserable.
6. [vs. 32] We have no gain in sacrificial service if Christ was not raised

Say, if the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not True, all the Preaching, Teaching, Healing, Ministry, and Mission work that has been done over the past 2000 years would all prove out to have been wasted time, energy, and money.  If the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not True, I would not be writing this Article and you wouldn’t be reading this Article.  The question isn’t so much, ‘Did It really happen?’  The question is, ‘Has the Resurrection of Jesus Christ made a significant difference in YOUR life and in MINE?”  Ponder that, my friend, and make a list of the way’s It has and the ways It needs to.

Let me close with a familiar writing by James A. Francis, ‘One Solitary Life.’

He was born in an obscure village the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for His clothing, the only property He had on earth. When He was dead He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today Jesus is the central figure of the human race, the leader of mankind's progress. All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that have ever reigned put together have not affected the life of mankind on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life. [And, I add, this is True because HE’S ALIVE!  The sting of the grave and the victory of death is a thing of the past for you and me if we but Believe, Receive, and Rejoice!

God Bless!        - P.T. J