Share It, Don't Store It (Friday Devotional)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

- 1 Peter 1:3-4

This past Sunday night, Lindsey and I spent half an hour cracking open the Easter eggs our son had accumulated at three different hunts throughout the week. We sorted through the candy and, yes, sampled some pieces along the way, and when we reached the end of the pile, we turned to the plastic refuse of opened eggs and Lindsey asked me, “What do we do with these now?” The choice, as best we could tell, was stark: we could save them for next Easter or we could throw them away. Either way, we knew we weren’t going to need those eggs until this time next year.

That’s true of a lot of the familiar elements of Easter. I doubt you’ll see lilies in your church’s sanctuary until next spring, despite their beauty, because those are Easter flowers. I suspect you won’t find yourself singing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” until a sunrise service on April 12, 2020, no matter how much you love that hymn, because it’s an Easter song.

And unfortunately, you may not think much about the Easter message that Christ is risen until next spring either. Jesus’s earthly ministry and atoning death occupy our minds throughout the year, and rightly so, but the best part of the good news all too often is resigned to one day of the year. The hope that ought to propel us into faithful ministry is too often shoved into the attic for next Easter along with the plastic eggs.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ offers us living hope—living, present tense. Jesus is alive, and that is something which should cause us all to rejoice every day, not just one morning per year. When you are afraid, the empty tomb shows that God is sovereign over all. When you doubt, the empty tomb proves that with God all things are possible. When you feel alone, the empty tomb is your reminder that the Lord is with you always, even to the end of the age.

Easter is the day we set aside to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it must not be the only day we do so. So as your Easter eggs collect dust in a plastic bin or sink to the bottom of a landfill, don’t let the hope of the resurrection lay dormant with them. News this good needs to be shared more than just once per year.