Easter is over.  The new clothes are hung up, the candy has been eaten, and choir directors and pastors everywhere–not to mention ushers–are enjoying the quiet routines of a Monday.  For the diehard Reformed, you know who you are, this Monday is like every other Monday because Easter Sunday is like every other Sunday:  Resurrection Sunday comes every seven days for you, not once a year. From Stephen Nichols. Read more here.

This past Friday night we had some friends over and I was sharing with the husband about the time God regenerated me as a 25-year old kid. I was recalling some of my sinfulness prior to salvation and how merciful God was to me in that he didn’t drop me off in hell.

As we continued to talk I shared with him how God’s kindness to me prior to salvation seems to pale in comparison to the stunning reality that God has continuously forgiven me more times than I can remember after he saved me.

As I approach my fiftieth birthday it appears to me that I have sinned more since God saved me than before. I’m stunned by his mercy.

Most people who have known me for three months or more have experienced my sin. Additionally, I have sinned against all my friends that I’ve had the joy to serve in small groups over the years. And I have sinned the most against my wife. It would be impossible to recount how many times I have broken her heart, let her down or disappointed her in some way because of my self-centeredness.

But the one who has been the recipient of all my sin is my heavenly Father. All my sin is an attack on the Divine. All my sin is my devious way of saying I know better than You and I will do it my way in this moment.

Here are some of the amazing things about his role in my sin: 

• He forgives.
• He releases me from the guilt. 
• He does not bring it up after he forgives.
• He caresses my soul. 
• He calls me his friend.

I am stunned. And to top it off, Easter is a profound reminder of the length he went to in order to give me these benefits and to secure my place in heaven where I can adore and worship him forever. 

Easter is mind boggling to me.

Nothing has changed in the mind of God. He still rules and reigns. Heaven has not been shaken and God is not despairing. God is in control of all things in heaven and in earth.

The Christian worldview is an interpretative grid that fills us with hope. We are resting and trusting in one who is greater than whoever is sitting in the Oval Office. Our King lifts rulers up and puts rulers down. He is the decision-maker at the bottom of it all.

Praise God that in uncertain times our Savior is the same on Tuesday and Wednesday and Forevermore!

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. -1Co 15:19 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. -Heb 13:8

Indeed, it may be safely asserted that the resurrection of Christ is the most important fact in the history of the world. –Hodge, p. 415 Systematic Theology

It is all very easy for infidels to say that these [disciples] were deceived, but it is equally foolish, for these persons could not every one of them have been so positively deceived as to say that they had seen this man, whom they knew to have been dead, afterwards alive; they could not all, surely, have agreed together to help on this [masquerade]: if they did, it is the most marvelous thing we have on record, that not one of them ever broke faith with the others, but that the whole mass of them remained firm. We believe it to be quite impossible that so many rogues should have agreed forever. –Spurgeon