What Easter means to me

Posted 18 hours ago

When I was younger, Easter meant primarily one thing–baseball cards. Yes, there were Easter eggs, chocolate, and jelly beans but the primary thing it meant to me was baseball cards.

Every year as part of my Easter basket, I would get about 15-20 packets of baseball cards. I am talking about the wax packs that came with a stale piece of gum. There were about 15 cards in each pack which meant I scored about 225 to 300 cards each Easter. These cards were the foundational of my collection each year at the start of baseball season.

I loved opening each pack and sorting through the cards to see who I got. Of course, I would always get duplicates or “doubles” as we referred to them. I was always on the lookout for George Brett or my other favorite Royals players.

Easter only meant going to church for a handful of years that I was growing up. It is not something we did and I understand my parents reasons for it. I do have vague memories of reading my Children’s Bible and trying to understand why the Easter story was located where it was in the Bible or why the story repeated in four different books.

I became a Christian during my freshman year at college. I heard the gospel message for the first time from a Campus Crusade for Christ staff member behind Strong Hall at KU. He met with me and another one of my fraternity brothers after we had filled out an interest card at a Campus Crusade event on campus.

After several weeks of thinking about the message that I heard and interacting with some other Christian students to ask questions and get their perspective, I decided to put my trust in Jesus. I was not completely convinced but had enough faith to take God and his word. But as I began to take my first steps as a Christian, I became more and more convinced that it was true and it changed my life.

What does Easter mean to me? Everything. It is the foundational event that my faith is built upon. And my faith is the foundation of my very life. It has set the trajectory of the person I want to be and the decisions I make each day. It is at the center of my marriage. It is my hope. It is my joy. It is my strength and it is what empowers my to face the most difficult days and choose to tie my shoes and press on.

I celebrate on this day the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That historical event changes everything. My faith is rooted in history and supported by a massive weight of evidence. His resurrection means that one day I will be resurrected to eternal life to enjoy his presence forever. I will experience life as he originally intended it. It will be the fulfillment of all these deep longings in my soul that I see played out in all the great stories. But it is not a fairy tale. It will be reality.

And it is not just something that I am waiting around to affect my future. It has a tangible reality today as God is transforming me into the new creation that one day I will experience fully when I am resurrected into a glorified body. I have a relationship with God here and now. It is my most important relationship and gives fullness to all my other relationships.

Easter means everything to me. I look forward to celebrating it every year. But I celebrate the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection every single day. Easter reminds me that my faith is rooted in historic reality. We know when it happened and can mark the occasion with joy each and every year as we wait for that great day when we will see him face-to-face.