"Because of the resurrection of Jesus, we live."

Today I was in Scottsboro for Easter at my brother-in-law's church. The entire sermon was so good, but one phrase really stuck with me, and I have been mulling over it all day, "Because of the resurrection of Jesus, we live."

In this post-modern world that we are living in, it is often hard to find clarity about anything. We are living in a culture that has blurred the lines of right and wrong, fact and fantasy so much, that I often view the world with marred vision. However, the gospel allows me to find the truth to stand on and view everything else. It is as if I am looking around and cannot quite make out an image of anything, then I turn to the gospel, and everything comes into focus. All that matters, the only thing is, are we living or dying? Without the death and resurrection of Jesus being a reality in our lives, we are dying, and if it is a reality, we are living--simple as that. There are two options--life or death. And it affects everything.

I am reminded of the C.S. Lewis quote, "And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." And isn't that true? If we know Jesus in his death and resurrection then everything, all of life, is about being made into the true version of ourselves--the live version of ourselves. If I am changing Ada's diaper, and fixing her bottle, and cleaning my house, and cooking dinner, I can trust, as one who has been redeemed, that Jesus is using these daily things to make me more and more into the person that He has intended me to be. And if I am not redeemed, even if I am accomplishing great worldly things, I am still living a life that ultimately results in death. No matter what great thing I do, I will still die. It will still end. So there is always this great dichotomy--either we are living and investing in the eternal, or, even in the great things, we are dying. What hope we have in the fact that Jesus came to us in our despair and lived and died that we might come to life. And, as Steven mentioned in the sermon, it is not a truth to ponder only on Easter, it is a daily thing. Because it is his resurrection that brings life to our daily stuff. Our daily routines. If we do not grasp the meaning of his resurrection then the life we are living is lived in vain.