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This month we will celebrate Good Friday and Easter. Both days
are of extraordinary significance for the Christian faith. Good
Friday wants to remind us to look back to the moment when Jesus
was crucified and died on the cross. It is the day when God
himself died substitutionally for all of our shortcomings in
order to open the doors for us into the relationship with him.
My hope is that we allow this truth to enter into our hearts so
that we might find peace for our souls. However, Good Friday is
only one side of the Easter long weekend. There is also the
celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the death.
The question for us today is whether there is some kind of
meaning in this raising from the dead for us today. There is a
little passage in the Bible that relates the death and
especially the resurrection of Jesus to our lives: “If only for
this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than
all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead […].
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead
comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ
all will be made alive.”
This means that the value and worth of the Christian faith
stands or falls with Jesus’ resurrection! But since Jesus rose
from the dead his followers live with the hope of life after
death. Therefore the limitation of our human lives by death at
the end of our time is not a threat, but rather the pathway into
the long desired presence of God. The same way how the heavenly
Father rose his son Jesus Christ from the dead, all the children
of God will be raised and brought into eternal life. This is the
direction of our Christian faith! This is the content of Good
Friday and Easter!
With a poem by Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr. I want to close
these “Words of Reflection” and wish all our readers a blessed
Easter weekend!
As Easter breathes hope for a joyous tomorrow
E'en out of the depths of despair,
So may this day banish from you every sorrow
And make you feel free as the air.
While hearing grand anthems that swell to the sky,
And breathing sweet lilies' perfume,
May you feel assured that your soul will not die
As life does not end in the tomb.
Deutsche Evangeliumskirche
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