Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Easter was two days ago, why are we still talking about it?

But did you know that in the church calendar, Easter (like Christmas!) is actually an entire season?! A season even longer than Lent, at 49 days. Easter is the hope of the Christian faith and the holiest day of the year, but it expands to a time of communal observance in the following weeks. And why shouldn’t it?! This is the cornerstone of the faith, the bedrock of our hope. I think it’s one of the most beautiful things the church calendar can help us meditate on and observe. 

Easter gives us space to place our faith in the victory of God. Jesus ushered in a new way of being human when he burst from the grave—a way born of forgiveness. Forgiveness by God, forgiveness for one another. He gives us hope that death does not have the last word, that we will be given new bodies and someday, a new creation. He gives us the hope that his Spirit is with us, testifying to his love.

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”

~ N.T. Wright

I love this! Our life in Christ is not just a distant hope of a heavenly future, it’s also a beautiful invitation into the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated when he broke out of that tomb all those years ago. It’s an invitation to partner with God in his new creation now and today.

Happy Easter!

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