I don’t celebrate Easter with candy and eggs. I don’t even celebrate Easter with a big family meal (ask my kids, I’m really bad at this stuff). I don’t even celebrate Easter because of my faith in God. Are you thoroughly confused now?
Here is why I celebrate Easter. Like the Israelites who were once held under the difficult and cruel hand of an Egyptian Pharaoh, so too I was held under the oppression of a captor. I celebrate Easter because even now that I am distant from that place in my life, I remember how I came out of it. Maybe you like me can say that you did the work on your own. Maybe you left behind some debilitating habit or behavior that impacted your life in ways that you didn’t realize were oppressive. Maybe you didn’t believe or know that you needed more to walk away, to be redeemed.
The thing about church is that like any group of members who share similar beliefs they tend to have words that only relate to them. The world we live in doesn’t typically use words like redemption, at least not on a regular basis. So, while the idea of leaving a life of drugs and alcohol abuse makes more sense to most, for me it is more fitting to say I was redeemed from their captivity. I didn’t just walk away. I didn’t just go through 12 steps and find peace. Yes, I did similar things, but I did more. I surrendered my self-control to Jesus. In doing that he redeemed me from those places of captivity. He took the work that I did on my own and made it not permanent but transforming.
When we are transformed from some behavior or thought we use a new system of reasoning in making choices. So, while I could possibly pick up destructive behaviors again, my thoughts are no longer just my own. I now have the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit whispering in my ear or as Scripture says, “a mighty rushing wind.” (Acts 2) Either way, I now have a permanent source of rescue or a redeemer to whom I can turn to give me strength and power to resist as well as joy and peace through belonging.
So, you see I celebrate Easter as a remembrance for what God has done not just through the ages of human existence, but for my own personal life experience. I celebrate Easter because I am not distant from access to God, but he lives personally within me and is always available. I celebrate Easter because I am not forgotten as a number or a statistic in the greater whole, but I am loved so individually that he knows not only my name, but every little detail about me.
I pray that you may find an Easter that is just like the transforming of colored eggs, so penetratingly new that it finds its way below the shell and soaks into your soul. I pray that you find an Easter that embraces you not only in the physical, but that it touches the deepest places in your spirit infusing you with lifegiving, redemptive love.
Blessings my friends for your journey.
Monica Swank 