I was pleased to see Graham Harding’s blog post today, because it gets to the point of why Easter is important to me, too. Graham is the Media Spokesperson for Christian Science in Tasmania and he’s agreed to my reposting it on this blog. Thanks Graham!
Easter Lilies
The Easter season gives me the opportunity to think more deeply about its meaning and what I hold in thought as important. For me, without downplaying the crucifixion, the most important aspect of the Easter story is the resurrection.
We can become so preoccupied with the cruel nature and illegality of Jesus trial and death that we forget that the purpose of the story is to reveal his overcoming of death. He revealed to us his ability to defy the most basic of physical laws by walking on the water, feeding thousands, healing many instantaneously and raising the dead and even himself.
The effect it had on his disciples was electrifying. For them it was an awakening, and it can be for us too.
Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science wrote of them in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Through all the disciples experienced, they became more spiritual and understood better what the Master had taught. His resurrection was also their resurrection. It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dullness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities. They needed this quickening, for soon their dear Master would rise again in the spiritual realm of reality, and ascend far above their apprehension. As the reward for his faithfulness, he would disappear to material sense in that change which has since been called the ascension.”
To me, the resurrection and finally, the ascension are possibly the greatest lessons that Christ Jesus gave to humanity. He demonstrated, by example, that life is not ultimately subject to death, nor does death have any life in it!
Now, that’s a wake up call.
