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| Photo courtesy of crossleadership.com |
Easter is a joyous time to celebrate and reflect upon the resurrection of Christ. After all, if it were not for His rising again on the third day, the Christian faith would not exist--Christ would have just been another zealous and deluded religious man who had made false claims and died in the grave.
But instead Christ has RISEN and the grave stands empty! Hallelujah!
While this truth is profound and forms the bedrock of our Christian faith, I have been struck with another, more personal, appreciation of Easter in recent years. You see, I have come to realize that the Easter story is not just about Christ, but it is about me, too, as a Christ-follower. As a born-again, regenerated believer, the Easter story is also my story. I have died to the power of sin, and I have been raised again in new life through Christ! Paul speaks of this in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20:
"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
And as I have been meditating upon Hosea this Passion Week, I have seen this promise of resurrection unfold in its pages as well!
See it with me in Hosea chapter 6..
“Come, let us return to the Lord;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
Do you see it, dear one? Do you see how we, too, have been afflicted, struck down, bound up, in effect, crucified? And then, too, we have been revived, resurrected to new life on the third day, that we may live forever more with God?
And once again, I am in awe. Who would have thought my journey into Hosea this week would so vividly retell the story of Easter?!
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