Though I appreciate paintings, I’m no painter. Asking me to draw stresses me out. I can go on a ten-kilometre run. With some effort, I can string words together. These are basic examples of some of the things I can do myself. There are many things I can and cannot do. Easter reminds me of what I couldn’t, and can never, do for myself. What Easter means to me is tied to this.
Side Note: Easter 101
Easter for a lot of people and countries, is one of the times of the year we get a break from work; public holidays. For some, it’s when particular baked goods, sweets and chocolates fill shoppers’ baskets.
Easter is when people all over the world celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection. It has deep meaning and significance for many people. For some, it is the time they join a church gathering of sort.
What Easter Means To Me
For me, Easter is not something removed. It isn’t about what other people believe. Easter, for me, is personal in a deep way. This is because of why Jesus died and came back to life. It’s about what His death and resurrection accomplished.
I’ve always believed in God. I also believed I needed to do a lot of good for God to love and accept me. That He had great plans for my life but the only if I banked enough ‘good’. I felt, no, knew that there’s something in my life that locked me out of a relationship with God.
What got in the way of a real relationship with Him was what I thought I had to do to have it. Somehow, I always had the sense that a full life and purposeful life was eluding me. I never felt I was a bad person just that my life was shallow, lacking meaning. My attempts to stay away from the bad and do good didn’t take this away.
This was the case until I understood that Easter was about Jesus doing something for me that I couldn’t do for myself. Specifically, Easter was about Jesus making me right with God. He was declaring that His love for me is what made me accepted by God, not how good I was through my own efforts.
Accepting this started me on a personal relationship with God, which gave my life meaning. A purposeful life. I could’ve never done these things myself. Not in my own efforts, goodness or intelligence.
In A Nutshell
Easter is about Jesus doing for me what I could not and can never do for myself. It is about Jesus dying and coming back to bring me into a relationship with God and give me a purposeful life.
It is one thing to know about something, it is another to have first-hand experience. You might be in a similar space I was. Maybe feel like there has to be more to life than you currently have. There is.