Happy Easter!

     Happy Easter everyone!  I am reminded today that we are so blessed to have been given the gift of a life with Christ.  The amazing part about this message that sets Jesus apart from other "saviors" of religions, is that he came for us.  There is no other world belief where the god actually offers us something without any payment on our part.  Jesus did the hard stuff.  He endured our beatings and rejection; he hung on our cross.  It didn't end there though, because he didn't just die.  He rose again.

     Ever think about the significance that he actually did rise again?  I mean, the whole message of Christianity hinges on that one fact.  He rose.  Without that, this whole belief would be in vain.  A god who just dies doesn't mean so much.  He bore our sin and then he came back to life, in order to give us life.

     So many of us though-- myself included-- often succumb to the daily routines of life.  Whether or not you belief in Christ's message, you can attest to the dreary repetitive cycle we all get into once in a while.  Consider this though: you have a daddy in Heaven who loves you so much that he decided you were worth saving.  He knew that you did bad things and you would reject him throughout your life, yet he still loved you so much that he sacrificed his precious son for you.  Not only that, but he now seeks to be with you every moment of every day.  Because Jesus paid the price for your sin, the Heavenly father who doesn't need you, wants you desperately.
     Try for a minute to grasp that, and then think about the daily routine.  Perhaps, your like myself and you all too often forget:


But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4-5).
—

     We were not freed in order to just "muscle through" our daily lives.  We were freed to be, well, free!  Every moment of every day is a gift that we are personally given by the same God who said we were worth the brutal hanging of the son of God!  I challenge you, as well as myself, to go forth with that realization as we step into a new week.  Granted, we won't remember the gravity of this love every minute of every day, but with practice-- like my Grateful 2013 project-- we will grow in our knowledge of God's love forever and ever.  If you aren't sure quite where you stand with God, or whether or not you're buying this extravagant love, I challenge you to imagine how your life would change if this really were true, if there really was a God of the universe who not only knows your name, but intensely desires a relationship with you.  Maybe it's worth investigating for yourself if this is true.  The only thing you could lose is some time, and it seems that within the daily grind: we already do a lot of that.