The Beauty of Easter

So Easter is always kind of a hectic time for me.  My sister's birthday is on the 25th of April and sometimes Easter falls near the Masters and school is usually getting to crunch time.  So I rarely get the week of Easter to JUST celebrate Easter.  But today we went to early church and I've got a few minutes to just sit and think about how really amazing it is.  You know how it is, when you're younger the only things you really take away from Easter are eggs and rabbits.  But even as you get into middle school and high school it still doesn't reveal it's true meaning you most people.  Granted some people are very deep thinkers but to me, at that time, all that I knew Easter as was a story.  And even though it is a great story, it's much more than that.

Now for those of you who don't know what Easter is about, I'll try to give the Cliffs Notes version of the story.  Basically this Jesus guy claims to be the Son of God and has performed some miracles and people are freaked out by that.  He has 12 apostles who are like his friends/followers and one of them, Judas, betrays Him and gives Him up to the Pharisees.  They don't really jive with Him claiming to be the Son of God and end up beating Him until he is unrecognizable and then they give him a cross. He is made to carry it through the streets of Jerusalem and to carry it to Golgotha, which is a sort of mountain or hill.  He is then nailed to the cross and left to die.  This is what Good Friday commemorates.  God sent Jesus to die for our sins.

The crazy thing about this story is that Jesus knew all along how much suffering He would have to go through. He wasn't exactly stoked about it either.  But God had told Him that it would save us from our sins. So this is sort of where the story gets interesting.  They bury Jesus in a tomb and roll this enormous stone in front of it to keep people out.  Then on Sunday, Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene found that the stone had been rolled away and an angel told them that Jesus wasn't there but He had risen from the grave.  This is where Easter comes from.  It's like the celebration that God not only sent His son to Earth to live with us but that He died for our sins AND was risen from the grave to go live in Heaven.  How freeing is that? It's God saying that He knows we're going to mess up and that's OK.

It's forgiveness day.  He sent His son to die for us just for our forgiveness! I can't even imagine giving up my dog and letting her suffer, but He gave up His own son!  It's tough for me to wrap my head around really.  Everything from knowing from that He was going to do it to actually letting His son get beaten and basically tortured.  I just can't imagine it.  But that's what it's all about, He freed us. Because He gave up His son, we can live free lives and be forgiven from our sins.  So always remember that Easter isn't just a story.  It's a symbol of the forgiveness the He gave us, and that is something that no one can take away.