Easter Sunday is one of the high points of the year for it is on that day that we get to joyfully celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But what about the other 364 days in the year? Does Easter Sunday have anything to say to them?
In Genesis, we read that God created the world and all that exists, including the first humans, in six days, and then rested on the seventh. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, lived in the paradise of Eden in perfect fellowship with God and had only one rule to follow: don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Despite all the good things they were given, it was not enough. Convinced by the great deceiver that God was holding out on them, the man and the woman ate from that tree. A wedge of guilt and shame immediately divided humans from God and all of God’s good creation fell into ruin. The perfect beauty God created turned into ashes.
But God still loved his broken and flawed creation and immediately promised to restore it by sending a special descendant of Eve who would defeat evil, bring humans back into relationship with God, and restore and renew his beloved creation.
Around 2,000 years ago, God the Father kept his promise by sending his Son into this world to become fully human and live a perfect human life for us. Jesus then offered up his perfect human life on a cross as the ultimate sacrifice that paid the full cost of forgiveness for all humanity. As we read in Hebrews 10:14, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
Along with complete forgiveness and purity, Jesus also gives us a totally new life as new people in a new world. Jesus died on a Friday, the last workday in God’s old creation. Like his Father, he rested on the seventh day, Saturday. And he rose on the eighth day, Sunday. The endless cycle of old creation weeks had come to an end, and a new creation was born.
Dear friend, the Good News of Easter is for every day of your life in this world. The old creation characteristics of brokenness and sin are everywhere around and in us. But remember who you really are. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:17)
Farewell to Shadowlands 