The Day of Rising...

For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

-2 Corinthians 5:14-21

I've been contemplating what to blog about for a couple of days now. I had another "woe is me" moment and had written a rough draft of it, but decided not to post it. Today, I should be in church celebrating Resurrection, but instead I have to take my husband to the airport so he can go for a 2 week training on how not to get captured by the enemy. After teaching them, they will then send them to the woods, let them run, find them, and then treat them to a mild version of prisoner of war games...complete with the occasional beating.

It is actually quite fitting when I think about it. He is going to learn how to save himself in the worst of circumstances on the day when the one who came to save us all from the absolute worst of circumstances, was brought back to life...from...the...dead. I hadn't really considered the importance of this part of the story, I mean truly evaluated how much my entire belief system hinges upon this one day, this one event. For if I don't believe it to be true, then it is absolutely, all for naught.

I'll admit it. I have a lot of questions about the faith I so wholeheartedly believe in. I don't fully understand why God needed His Son to die in order so we could all live. I don't fully understand why there had to be suffering or hardship, why we couldn't have just lived our entire lives in a perfect world. I have some ideas as to the answers: that in order to understand the strength of Him, we needed to see the depths from which He could pull us up or that once our human flesh was given the choices of free will, we had to have a way to make up our imperfection to a perfect God. I get that.

But today as I was contemplating this, awaiting my husband to finish his shower before I took him to torture camp, I read the above verses. God is the God of Reconciliation. We needed what we celebrate today, the sacrifice of God's Son and God in one so that we could come back no matter how many times we find ourselves drifting away. I found a definition for reconciliation that says it means "the process of making consistent or compatible." (dictionary.com) What a perfect definition of what we are doing in our belief and celebration of the day that our God sacrificed His Son and rose Him from death. He did it so we could be made compatible with Him: imperfect humans with a perfect God. He did it to make us consistent: constant sinners who sometimes did good become consistent saints. He did it so we could become new, so that the old self that repulses us so could dissolve, never to be seen again.

I guess the point I am making is that no matter how far away God may feel or no matter how far away we try to get from Him with our disobedience, anger, self-condemnation, sorrow, depression, fear, or any other self-destructive mindset, He is the God of reconciliation, always there, waiting to bring you back. All because of today: the day in which His Son rose again from the grips of death. Happy Easter! May you find the power of today's true meaning in your own life.

Until next time,

-C.