Hear the bells ringing.
He’s alive.
Jesus came back to life after he was killed and lives even now.
I believe that. I can’t prove it, but I believe it, and it changes everything.
Last year, I got stuck on the very real prospect of my mortality. Maybe it’s my age or my existential bent, but the thought of death and the end of me was totally freaking me out.
For a short time, I even started wondering if eternal life was real or just something folks made up so they could feel better about dying. My questions started to outnumber what I could substantiate, and I found myself doubting eternity.
Why hadn’t God spelled everything out for us?
Why hadn’t he made it completely obvious?
Why not let us have just a peek?
And then I read the New Testament again, and this time I had the grim reaper sitting on my shoulder shouting in my ear. “This world is all there is.” Blah, blah, blah. He kept on and on. Now that might seem like a bad thing, but it really got me to looking for what those early church guys thought about the afterlife. Eventually, the questions died down, and the whispering in my ear came to a stop. There was just too much in the New Testament that contradicted a physical death being the end of everything for us.
O Death where is thy sting?
O Grave where is thy victory?
Jesus knew this was going to be hard to comprehend, so he talked about it a lot. Not only that, but when I started looking I found a thread of verses throughout the entire Bible that reinforced the promise of eternity. So God had actually told us a lot about eternity. It’s all right there– in between Genesis and Revelation. But no real peeks behind the curtain. Maybe he doesn’t make it completely obvious because we just can’t comprehend it. It would be like someone telling a baby in the womb what the outside world was like. Poor little guy just wouldn’t understand it at all.
So God tells us. He shows us. And he leaves the believing part to our free wills.
It’s Holy Week–the time of year we focus on Jesus’ death and what he did for us. As we look into those dark days, may we ever keep an eye focused on the end. The empty tomb. You know, it might be possible for an imperfect man to die for those who don’t deserve such a sacrifice, but there has only been one man who died for the undeserving and then brought himself back to life.
Hear the bells ringing.
He’s alive.
Let the world hear the news. Death is not the end. God intends to introduce us to eternity.
Tuneful Tuesday celebrates the resurrection.
Keith Green – The Easter Song
