Easter

In a few days children across the country will run through fields looking for eggs filled with candy, sunday morning they will wake up with joy filled eyes as they look upon baskets filled with goodies. Many people will step foot into a church for the first time in months just because it is a holiday. People will go home, or wake up and start cooking and possibly cleaning for family to come over and share a massive meal of ham and other goodies. All this done to apparently celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. Some who aren't even Christians will celebrate Easter, some for the pagan traditions such as the Equinox. Easter is a time we generally think about some things. It is somewhat the beginning of spring in some people's eyes: the beginning of something new, or rather the end of death and the beginning of new life.

Christ died on the Cross so that we could be forgiven of our sins. On that day he made us new. He gave us a promise of not only forgivenss and eternal life, but also understanding and acceptance, not by those around us but by him. We look at Easter as egg hunts, candy, meals and other random things, but is God really in those things? Can they give us the same promise that Christ did when he died on the cross? Each day we all deal with different hardships, different demons. But one Easter we are somehow able to push them all behind us and remember or focus on the promise of a new life that Jesus gave us the moment he was arrested in the garden.

Right now I am sitting outside and the dogs are running around like mad animals in the fresh air. In front of me is a tree beginning to blossom. I didn't notice the blossoms until now. Everything else is brown, there is a little green in the grass and the evergreen beside our house, but the white in the blossoms are what is standing out to me. Like the white in new robes. White of purity and innocence. It's the beginning of something new, a new life among the tree, and a new life among not only me, but many people around. Jesus gave a new perfect life, a chance at something we could only dream of before he died on the cross. Easter is not about egg hunts, a bunny leaving baskets of candy for children, the big huge dinners (though the time with family is incredibly important), but about the fact that we were given a precious gift. We were given the chance to bud into a new life like the tree in my yard.