Jack of Harts

He died. He stormed the Gates of Hell. He came back to life.

Christmas is the time we Christians celebrate the gift God gave us. His own self. The very Son of God made manifest on Earth. Because he loved us. Because he wanted to give us another way to follow him.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

Easter is the time we Christians mourn over the price He paid to give us that gift. Being whipped and beaten to within an inch of his mortal body’s life. Having a crown of thorns hammered into his skull. Being hung on a Roman cross between two criminals. All because he preached something different than what the religious leaders of the time would accept or allow. Even the Romans saw no fault in him. But religious leaders would not let him live.

Not that it worked out for them in the end. He got better. He came back. And those who followed him began to preach a new message. Those who killed him died in fires of their own and then were cast to the four winds of the Earth by Romans who were done dealing with their crap. And the new little Christian cult offshoot of the Jewish faith spread out and converted the greatest empires of the world in time. Built the great Western Civilization we live in now and transformed the world as we know it in a mere two thousand years.

But the hatred didn’t end. We’ve seen this weekend that there are still those who would kill us given the chance. Bomb our churches. Bomb our hotels. Burn and murder whenever they can. Two thousand attacks on French churches just in the last two years. And now Notre-Dame. The oldest churches in the known world in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt have been burned and murdered out of their homes in the last two decades by those who want them erased from history. And now they kill hundreds in Sri Lanka on our holiest of days.

The day we celebrate the glory of a Risen God who came back from Death itself to give us a way home when our life here is done.

Death raises its ugly head again on the backs of those who hate so much that they would rather die then spend one more minute in a world where others belief differently than they do.

But Life is stronger. That’s the message of Easter in the end. Death will claim all of us in the end, but there is no reason to fear that. For God’s claim is greater and we will live forever once our time here is done.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

For He is Risen, and the Devils tremble when we Believe and say His name.

Jesus.