Easter Revisited

As Christians we are promised
that when we trust and believe in this way,
that when we believe in the power and the love of God, a power and love that can raise the dead to life,
that our lives will be blest, and that we will be a blessing to others.

We are promised that what we believe will make a difference to us ---
And indeed it does....

Let me tell you a true story:

In Russia a few years ago a railway worker accidentally locked himself
in a refrigerator car. Unable to escape or to attract attention, he
resigned himself to his fate. As he felt his body becoming numb he
took a pencil out of his pocket and recorded the story of his
approaching death. He scribbled on the walls of the car:

" I am becoming colder... still colder... I am slowly freezing... half
asleep - these may be my last words.

When the car was opened the man was found dead, but the temperature of the car was only about 56 degrees. Officials found that the freezing mechanism was out of order and that there was plenty of fresh air
available. Although there was no physical reason that they could find for the man had died. It was concluded that he had died because he had believed that he would die.

My friends, what you believe to be true affects you to the core of your being, it shapes you and makes you what you are,
- it either blesses you because it opens you up to the power of God,
or it afflicts you because it blinds you to what you could be and what God is trying to do for you.

The Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber shares this important insight in his book entitled, “I and Thou”: You know, always, in the depths of your hearts, that you have need of God, more than of anything else. But do you know that God also has need of you; that (God), from the fullness of (God’s) eternity needs you.

Indeed the promise of Easter is that God so loved (so needed) the world that he gave his only. God needs you for desires a relationship with all of creation. God seeks to redeem creation; to bring it back to wholeness so that the “Shalom” which the early Hebrews spoke of becomes a reality in our living.