You know the pertinence of Jesus being the grave for three days to me? He was dead.
Really. That is the pertinent issue to me.
Jesus was dead, and there was no miracle worker to call His name and bring Him back. There was no one with the power to lie on Him and breathe Him back to life. There was no one to speak to the dry bones. There was no one to do anything really cool or just weird to make life return. He was dead, and there was no hope He was coming back.
This morning I woke up around 0300, and I lay in my bed staring into the dark, and I tried to get into the profundity of this weekend. I want it to be more than just a fun day with good food and candy. I lay there in the dark and asked the Lord, "Talk to me about this. What do you want me to get out of this?"
Very clearly, I heard one word:
"HOPE."
When you are sitting in the dark, staring at the dead, it's easy to lose hope. It's easy to chastise yourself for being stupid enough to believe something way too good to be true. It's easy to be crushed mentally and emotionally because you trusted. It's easy to feel disillusioned because you had grandiose ideas...that someone else had the power to kill.
It's easy to stare in shock as what you just knew was our life's destiny is stolen by someone else, battered beyond recognition, and killed before your very eyes. It's easy to look at what is dead and give up hope of the life you thought you were going to have.
I'm quite sure the disciples felt that way.
And they were right.
The easy lives they thought they would have as nobility under the reign of a King who was going to restore Israel and overthrow her oppressors died with the humiliation of a criminal, not the honor of a king. All they had hoped for was put in a tomb and sealed in darkness.
Think about that for a moment.
The hope lay in the darkness.
What they thought God was going to do was dead.
What God had always planned to do was safe and sound...
in the darkness.
Darkness isn't hopelessness. Darkness is the place hope resides because it is the place God speaks into to create life no one ever dreamed of before.
In Genesis 1, He spoke into the darkness and created an entire physical world that the hosts of heaven had never known. In the Gospels, He spoke into the darkness of the tomb to create an undefeatable King who reigns over sin and death. The hope of salvation didn't live in the human body of Christ. It was born in the resurrected body of Christ. The hope wasn't in His never dying.
The hope was in the darkness where everything was dead...except for the plan of God.
Hope isn't knowing what God is doing.
Hope is trusting God is doing something.
I know a lot of people who are looking into darkness in a lot of places in their lives right now. I figure a lot of you are, too.
I pray this is a weekend that reminds you of what Jesus did for you
...and what God is still doing for you.
I pray that it is a time of hope...not in what you see...
but in the heart and faithfulness of the God who is doing things you can't see.
Blessed resurrection celebration to you all!
Jerri
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