What Does Easter Mean to You?

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. What is the first thing that comes to YOUR mind when you think of Easter? Easter baskets? Easter eggs? The Easter bunny?

So many of our Christian celebrations are being taken over by the secular world, and Easter is no different. Today people think of coloring eggs, hiding eggs, the Easter bunny leaving gifts, a new dress to wear to church (the one they attend for the only Sunday of the year,) but Easter should mean something more to us as Christians.

So many of the contemporary Easter symbols have evolved into what the world wants to think of them. Take for instance the egg. Anyone who has children knows what I mean when I say we spend a frustrating day boiling tons of eggs, mixing dye with vinegar, allowing our children to put on aprons, and watching them make a mess of our kitchen. Why? Because it’s Easter, and that’s what you do on Easter. But for the early Christians, the egg itself was a symbol of the empty tomb after Jesus was resurrected, and the Christians at that time dyed eggs red to symbolize the blood of Christ.

For the early church, the Resurrection meant Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, as He said he would, and the whole week before Easter contained a group of events that gave them a reason to celebrate: The Last Supper, Good Friday, (which commemorates Jesus’ death on the cross,) and finally Easter … when He defied death and rose from the grave.

When I contemplate this holiday, I think of what Jesus Christ did for me. He left His unimaginably glorious home in heaven to be born as a baby, to live his life as a mere human, to be ridiculed, tortured and to die a horrible death … for ME.

In John 1:29b, John calls him the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” That “lamb” was “led as a sheep to the slaughter;” (Acts 8:32a) as a sacrifice for our sins. He did that for us, so that we might have eternal life.

What a wonderful time to celebrate that great love! Easter gives me a reason to love God even more: His holiness, His majesty, His sovereignty, His patience, His mercy, His great knowledge and wisdom, but most of all, His exceptional and unconditional LOVE. 

I hope you truly feel God’s love through the sacrifices He made for us.

Happy Easter, my friends.