Happy Easter

Happy Easter to each of you. Joyce and I celebrated at our local church, Pillar Church where we entered a trial period of two morning services. Joyce is singing in the choir so we needed to be there at 8AM. Our daughter Leah, an elder at the church asked us to greet before both services so we did that as well. It was a good morning celebrating the victory of our Savior and Lord over sin, death and evil. Since our children are away in Florida on Spring break Joyce and I were alone in Holland and decided to have Easter brunch at a nice restaurant n Lake Macatawa. We enjoyed that.

Reflecting on the message of Easter I decided to read the article on "resurrection" in Alan Richardson's Theological Word Book. [I have had this book since early in my seminary years for the return address sticker has our first Holland address, 7 1/2 W. 17th Street; an upstairs apartment in what then was an old house. It still stands and we have "fond" memories of living there.]

What follows are some thoughts/ideas/truths that are found in this resurrection article.

"The main evidence for the resurrection of Christ is provided by the existence and growth of the church itself...(Good Friday bringing catastrophe to the earthly mission of Jesus and then within a couple weeks the disciples are boldly proclaiming Jesus' resurrection...)

"The New Testament writers are concerned to proclaim he resurrection of Jesus not to explain it. It is a mystery beyond human comprehension, and the Apostles are its witness, not it psychologists. It has come to them as a fact, not as a philosophical explanation."

"The Gospel accounts teach or imply that Jesus rose in the body though it is implied that his risen body possessed capacities not shared by our ordinary bodies...Jesus' presence to the Apostles after his resurrection was as 'real' as his bodily presence in Galilee had been. Against all modern attempts to explain the resurrection as something natural and comprehensible...it is necessary to insist that the resurrection of Jesus is miracle, mysterious and irreducible, from the biblical point of view...we must not dogmatize about what the body of the Lord could or could not have done."

"Without committing ourselves to any crudely materialistic notions or any over-simple explanations f the mode of the resurrection, we may maintain that the doctrine of the physical resurrection conserves more of the unfathomable truth behind he mystery than does the denial of it."

"The New Testament writers affirm that the resurrection of Christ was God's act in the same sense that the Old Testament writers taught that the redemption of Israel from Egypt was God's act. [The resurrection of Christ] is the sign vouchsafed by God of the ultimate victory over sin, death and the devil but in this age the victory is discerned only by faith: the risen Christ appeared to none save believers, nor will he be seen save by the eye of faith till the Parousia [his return]. In this sense the resurrection of the Lord must be viewed as an eschatalogical sign or symbol in history of the ultimate consummation of God's purpose 'beyond history' -- the final triumph of God."

Well, that is probably more than you wanted to know but I pray that some statement touched and ministered to your soul.

Remember: "Do what God says. Say what God does."