I feel like any of my stumbling expressions are entirely inadequate for all the ramifications of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is Holy ground. For the follower of Jesus, this is the zenith. Easter addresses all our cosmos, all our past, all our discouragements, fears, traumas, grief and manifold emotions of a broken world.
On Good Friday and throughout the Easter weekend, it was so good to be with our home fellowship and so many trusted church family in loving and relational celebration. I was profoundly struck in a fresh way by the relational events surrounding the cross and the public interactional dimensions of it. I wondered if sometimes we miss something of this, as careful as we are as thought-out, doctrinally protective Evangelicals, we are quick to jump to our theological framework, we have our own well-trod liturgy, songs, path and routine. Our minds have open gates to a neurological palace of many details, well-sequenced paths harmonised by gospel accounts. The older our walk with God, the more to recall and process, but there is something greater than handled detail or recalled knowledge, an instinct of greater weight and shock significance... HE LOVES US.
Here, at the foot of the cross, and staring into an empty tomb, there is nothing of the ordinary or usual and everything of the extraordinary. The greatest of it all we glean is His love for you and me. Such is the extravagance, compassion, magnitude and depth of it, we will never have a "handle" on it. Nothing should hit us harder or rock us back on our heels more to assess our lives, identity and very existence with urgency than the fact that He comes and dies, perseveres, communicates, obeys, persistently pours himself out and completes the work... in love for us.
