Easter Reflection

It's Saturday.. It's beautiful in every way and tomorrow is Easter.
Easter has always been my favorite holiday. It beats my birthday and even Christmas!
Growing up, my family never really celebrated Easter. Occasionally, my step mom, when I had one, would hide plastic eggs full of quarters and a few golden eggs with $10 bills and that was always cool because I always found the golden ones :)
But as early as 11, I made the connection that Easter was a holiday that NO one could ever ruin for me.
No family drama, no misfit present, no voice-cracking embarrassment, no bad hair day or even boys I liked could ever mess up Easter. And that's a lot coming from a preteen girl, but this theory wasn't just on paper- it was tried and true. Every single year something competed for my attention, dragged me toward discouragement and despair or just failed me.
But in my heart of hearts, my joy for Easter was the same source as my confidence for living-Jesus!
He would never (&has never failed me!)
I must admit, I've have some really great Easters-- one year I went to Peru with my best friend, one year I went skydiving, some years I came home and did homework or studied for school the next day. Some years were horrible-family fued, the inevitable feeling of aloneness when cute families match and hang out together and you walk home alone, years with giant earthquakes or overwhelming amounts of homework and tests. But regardless of how eventful or miserable the circumstances of that happy Sunday may be
"my hope is built on nothing less,
that Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' Name"
And as another Easter arrives, another Holy Week past, I am SO excited!!! I am thrilled to celebrate Jesus rising from the dead and trampling death by death! I'm overjoyed to get together with His people and praise Him as it should be.
Easter begs me to truly consider Christ.
His laying aside the glory of heaven to enrobe himself in stinky humanity.
Living perfectly sinless overcoming temptation, inward struggle, misunderstanding and rejection.
And just when His glory should have been completely unveiled, Christ died exchanging His perfect holiness for my shame. He took on the FULL weight of wrath that my sin incurred.
He was forsaken, abandoned and rejected by the Father. And His Father was pleased to do so.
He left his friends knowing they'd be sad and struggle, his earthly family knowing they weren't his own even though he had been with them for 33 years!
He faced hell and death and separation in the worst way possible.
And then, in a change of events that only God could orchestrate, Christ rose from the dead, freeing all of us forever from the bondage that is our rotting corpses and sin-ridden hearts.
He redeemed us.
He made me a daughter of the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. I can come to Him freely in praise, in prayer, in distress, in unbelief, in my better moments and my worse-er moments confident of this very thing that He who has begun a good work in me with be faithful to complete it!
And,now, I get to live with Heaven in sight. Not in sight like the end of a five year plan that I'll have to toil and continually detour through, but in sight in the light of my inner man being renewed day by day, my stony heart being replaced with a heart of flesh, my ability to promote and commend His kingdom and his great and amazing name.
I get to live in light of His death and it moves me to live a life of worship.
I'm thankful that Easter reminds me not only of the gospel that my ever-longing hearts needs to be contented by, but of the GREAT, mighty, immeasurable power that raised Christ from the dead and is at work today in believers like me and you.
No one can touch/take/steal/cheapen/ruin that.
I'm grateful, excited and blown away.
I pray you have an incredible Resurrection Sunday considering Christ and knowing that He is risen indeed!