Senior Pastor's Ponderings...
A pastor said a couple of years ago that stopped me in my mental tracks: The world offers promises full of emptiness. But Easter offers emptiness full of promise.
Now, pause, go back, and read that sentence above once again. . .
All of the “empties” of Easter include – Empty Cross, Empty Grave-Clothes, Empty Tomb – all full of promise. Easter is the exact opposite of the way of the world. Easter is talking about dying in order to live.
What is it about God that makes him so favor this kind of paradox? I guess this is what we should expect from the Servant King – the God who decided that the best way to save the world was to let it kill him. I don’t understand the way God thinks. But on those days when I feel hollowed out and even broken-half-dead, it makes me glad to remember that for Easter people, even death is full of promise.
The world makes a lot of promises. Smoke and mirrors, mostly. Frantic, cartoonish attempts to distract us from the gaping holes in the middle of our souls (or to sell us the latest product in order to fill them). There’s no life in those promises.
So, I’m hoping that. . .I’ll be a little more willing to die to that stuff. I’m praying I’ll become more aware of the empty space within, and that I’ll resist the urge to fill it with any old thing I can find. I’m going to wait, carved out, vulnerable, a cracked and crumbling jar of clay, on a life God’s offered to deposit anywhere there’s room. I’m going to believe that if I’ll just leave my empty spaces empty, Jesus will fill them with resurrection life!
Blessed Easter to you and yours!
+PD