Stupid Covid…It doesn’t even feel like Easter

09/04/2020

Stupid Covid…It doesn’t even feel like Easter

So tomorrow is Good Friday, and I know you’ve said it doesn’t even feel like Easter, which got me thinking.

Is it because no one is planning their long weekend vacations, or taking the kids on road trips? Many people were sent home from work weeks ago, so there’s none of that longing for a break, no counting down the hours until clock off. There’s no churches open to worship and share communion in. The pubs are all shut, and parties all illegal.

This is what Easter has come to mean to us, and we need our rituals, our revelry, and our routines to make things feel ‘real’.

But if were honest, its the state of the world that doesn’t feel real, but perhaps this is the most real and Biblical Easter seen for many generations!

There’s a strange anxious energy in the air, sleepless nights, weird constant dreams, schedules and plans thrown to the wind, the common law is now like shifting sand beneath our feet, we have no idea where we stand, and as each question is answered, six new questions appear in its place. The world as we know it is disappearing before our eyes and literally God only knows what the world will look like on the other side of Covid-19.

If I were alive in the days of Christ, in the lead up to His world altering cross debut, I imagine some of these same experiences were likely. When those drops of blood dripped from His brow in the garden before His arrest, there would have been this unfamiliar heightened spiritual activity too. After Christ’s death and resurrection, the world as they knew it would never be the same again.

In our Christian culture, where Christmas and Easter are celebrated every year, some Bible stories are familiar. Many of us would be familiar with the countless warnings from God to His people, that a captivity was coming if we refuse to turn to God. I don’t know about you but this sure feels like being captives. Or how about the infamous story of the ten plagues, and the Passover, where the spirit of death struck the modern city of its day, taking the lives of those without protection and leaving others untouched. Kind of like an unknown virus that is both a killer and asymptomatic at the same time, yet no one seems to know who it will strike down and who it will miss.

I’ve lost count of how many people have asked me in recent days to “put in a good word with the man upstairs” for them. Isn’t Easter the perfect reminder that each person, every single one of you, has an advocate in Heaven, vouching to God on your behalf, His own precious blood shed in your honour. You don’t need me, though you’re all in my prayers, myself included, but as my teen daughters bestie constantly quips “Y’all need Jesus!” for He is already putting in a good word for you! Hallelujah! 🙌

This Easter, we don’t need a church to worship, for all it takes is recognition and deep gratitude in our souls. We don’t need a party, for countless unseen angels filling the sky, are already celebrating the softening of our hearts. We don’t need a vacation, for time on this earth is fleeting and never meant to be our permanent home. We don’t need our distractions and our dysfunctions to survive another day, for when all the noise of life becomes quiet our ears can hear more clearly the still small voice to guide us.

The trials we face right now, are simply a test, the furnace to purify the priceless worth of precious metal, the melting pot of affliction to refine us. The clearing away of all our imperfections, our indulgences and our weaknesses, to strengthen and renew our faith.

My prayer for us this Easter is for all to be covered with the precious blood of The Lamb of God, and for hope to spill over in abundance at the possibilities of a New World.

May God bless you and give you His peace this Easter ❤️

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