"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the JOY set before him ENDURED the cross, scorning its shame,
and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. CONSIDER him who
ENDURED such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary
and lose heart. In YOUR STRUGGLE against sin, you have NOT yet
RESISTED to the point of SHEDDING your blood." Hebrews 12:2-4 (emphasis
mine)
May our lives reflect a RISEN savior by overcoming the sin which
so easily entangles us. We pray our lives will show how Jesus is still personally involved in our lives and the lives of those we serve. We must strive to look more like Jesus and less like ourselves. The resurrection is one of the most precious gifts we have which sets us a part from other religions. Our God LIVES!!! He is not idly sitting, He is preparing a place for us. We praise our RISEN SAVIOR today.
On a side note: Our lives can't be divided or balanced between
the Easter Bunny and Jesus. I am not trashing the bunny, I am just
saying we should always be open to changing our traditions. Sadly, many
of our traditions reflect another reason to focus on ourselves and
giving to ourselves versus giving all of our focus, undivided focus on Jesus
where it should be. In the cultures we serve overseas, they observe many pagan traditions of which we do not participate. As we re-enter our own culture, what's pagan we 'have always' observed becomes clearer. And we don't have to compromise to reach the culture around us. If I am really living for Jesus daily, I don't have to give away Easter eggs and candy to reach people who do not know Him. I want them to know Christians are different. We celebrate a risen Jesus..the only God who was ever resurrected from the dead. The one who sent His Spirit to LIVE in each one of His children. We should allow nothing, not even eggs and bunnies to divert the attention away from those facts. Sure, resurrection eggs teaches the story of the resurrection - what about that? Again - the problem is if our lives really reflected lives of THE RISEN SAVIOR, we wouldn't have to resort to using eggs to teach a culture about Him. Living testimonies. Again, not hating on the bunny or the eggs, just saying, lets make sure our traditions really, truly reflect Jesus and not observe traditions because they are not 'bad traditions'. The question is, are our traditions godly and do they point others back to Jesus? It is a fair question.