Alive to God

Good morning God

Christ is Alive! (But of course YOU know THAT!)

Easter never fails to remind me how good it is just to be ALIVE. 

I don’t mean alive in the body, I mean alive to YOU.

Being alive to YOU is all about being open to the joy of what is possible in this world, believing and knowing  that miracles really can happen, that life is everlasting, and that nothing, but nothing, can separate us from YOUR love in Christ.

Some would say that living in resurrection hope today means being unrealistically optimistic. They ridicule the joy and the hope that we have,  especially  in these times of global warming, earthquakes, wars and famines. There is just so much pain and suffering in the world they cry. But there always has been. Throughout human history, there have always been those who have been so distressed by their life that they have believed death to be the only possible answer. The call for changes in the law concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia are evidence that this is still the case for many today. 

It’s not difficult to understand how pain can destroy the desire for life and how grief can rob people of the will to live – but your Easter message changes all that.  

Easter is not your denial of the pain or suffering of death, it is your answer to our fear of it, and to the mistaken belief that in the end, death is all that is left to us.

By his resurrection, Christ proclaimed that LIFE, not death, is the final and lasting answer. It is this that justifies the hope and optimism of those who are alive to you.  

Being live to you means knowing that life really is stronger than death, hope is more powerful than despair and joy is more lasting than grief. There is more.

Christ is alive! 

In spite of pain, in spite of suffering, in spite of the violence hatred and fear that tried to kill the love he wanted to share with us – Christ is alive. The empty tomb stands as silent witness to the failure of death to keep the truth of life buried.

Christ is alive and calls us to live a new life with him. A life of faith and hope that can be lived confidently in the knowledge that death will never be your final answer.  No matter what the world throws at us, we can step boldly into the future that you has planned for us knowing that we cannot be destroyed or denied by something as small as death.  Because Christ lives, we too can live.

Easter is not a call from you to believe in life after death, it is to believe in life instead of death.

Christ is ALIVE – and so are we.