At the beginning of Good Friday service I made a simple request of God, a simple request with a heavy answer: please show up. And show up he did. In ways I never could have expected, in epic, amazing, undefinable glory. Over the course of the weekend He declared in a loud voice, you are Mine, and I love you. He showed me the depth of His love for me through my two sons, ages two and four. I brought them in to worship with me and my wife at the end of service. And as we sang, I put my hand in the air, reaching towards the cross, and their little hands joined mine. They had never done that before. At that moment, my love and adoration for them hit a new level, and it was at that moment that God spoke to me. He said “do you feel how much you love them right now? I love you more.” For the first time, I felt the weight of his love. But this, it turned out, was only the beginning.
On Saturday, we were crazy enough to schedule a birthday party in the midst of easter week for my youngest who happened to be turning two this weekend. One of my oldest friends told me some amazing news. His father who had been fighting cancer, had, it turned out, been cured. We had prayed for it, prayed for it to be taken away completely, for an unexplainable cure. It came. He came. This wasn’t just any form of cancer (not to downplay any form of cancer.) But we are talking about pancreatic cancer here, it’s not supposed to go away. But it did. God said, because I love you, and because you asked, I’m going to do this. I’m going to show you that I am bigger than inoperable cancer. Dream big, I am here for you, I will fight for you. He could have stopped there, but He wasn’t done.
He’s never done I suppose. But he had more to show me on Sunday. As we sat and soaked in the amazing arts piece, and the passionate teaching, I looked around the amphitheatre. I saw what turned out to be 6,400 people at the 9am service. More than any Easter service we’ve done at ROCKHARBOR; and there was glory in that alone. But the true teaching moment came for me though when the call for Baptisms came. In front of me a woman got up to be baptized, unbeknownst to the rest of the people sitting next to her. As the people around her realized the step she had taken, the tears began to fall. Big sobbing tears. Tears that came from a place of such a deep longing for the soul of someone close. A longing for them to know Jesus. Soon after, everyone I was with joined in the tears of joy. This was the moment when God showed me the depth of his love, for everyone, beyond me. How he breaks down walls, and answers the deepest most intimate prayers of those who follow him.
It was as if he reached down in that amphitheatre and grabbed me tightly, and whispered in my ear. “Do you see? These are the things I promise you, I will love you more than you can possibly imagine, I will lift up those around you, I will proclaim my glory in all things, I will fight for you and for those you care about, nothing will stand in my way.”
This, is what Easter is all about.
Easter Stories: Through A Child’s Eyes
This year, Easter was a little different for me. It was the first Easter service for my 7 month old son, Ben. At first, I didn’t think it would really be all that different. I mean, he’s way to young to understand the service, or what Francis would be saying. He would probably take a quick look at what was happening on stage, and then resume playing with his toys, which would be far more interesting to him. I wasn’t expecting for him to change my outlook on Easter, and remind me why I fell in love with Jesus in the first place.
Having grown up in the church and being a Christian most of my life, it’s really easy for me to get caught up in the routine of things. To take for granted stories and events I’ve heard or been to a hundred times. It’s not that I mean to do this, I think it’s just something we as humans have to purposely overcome, and a lot of times I”m not in the mindset to think about over coming it. So I just go along through the motions, happy to celebrate, but ultimately seeing things through the lens of experience.
As worship ended and the performers took the stage, Ben looked up from the toy he was playing with and with rapt attention watched the story of God unfold before him. Maybe it was the colors, maybe it was all those people dancing, maybe it was the stirring narration. But with his wide eyes he stared at the stage and took in everything that was happening before him. The look of wonder and awe in his eyes is something that I never want to forget. You always hear that you rediscover the world through your children’s eyes, and for the first time I truly understood that this weekend.
A hundred memories and feelings came bubbling to the front of my mind. Me giving my life to Christ, getting baptized, and my first Easter service with ROCKHARBOR. I was reminded of the excitement I used to always feel when hearing the message about my savior being raised from the dead. My sins being completely forgiven and the power of the cross on display.
God showed me this Easter that maybe I need to take a step back every now and then to make sure I’m not taking anything he does for granted. That I should come to him as a child seeking and experiencing him for everything that he is. To not just bring in what I know, but to try and seek him out as if it were the first time.
As I was thinking about all of this, my mind went to that passage in gospels where Jesus tells us to have the faith of a child. This was a verse I’d heard a hundred times, but it was shown to me new again in the face of Ben. I could imagine the faces of those children as they played around Jesus and took joy in who He was.
Amongst all the busyness and craziness of life, I want to just take a few minutes to just breath. To remember the way I felt the first time I fell in love with Jesus and what he had done for me. To look at my savior through the eyes of a child, seeing things for the first time.