Spring has sprung! Listen and you’ll hear a variety of birds chirping. Smell and you’ll enjoy the fragrance of flowers opening up their new blossoms. Look around and almost everywhere you’ll see newness and freshness. Spring is a season of growth. Almost overnight it seems the grass needs to be cut and the plants and trees are filling in with leaves. I have wisteria on the west side of house. It has grown over the pergolas and right now is a sea of purple blossoms ushering in spring. There are fields on the south and west side of our neighborhood and an empty field directly behind our house – they are alive with bunnies! And butterflies are bees are busy fluttering and buzzing from one new bud to another. This is one of my favorite times of year.
Spring is the season which we celebrate Easter. It is so much more than bunnies and butterflies and egg coloring and egg hunts and baskets of chocolate! Newness of life – redeemed life – forgiveness at the cross, this is why we celebrate.
John 3:16 is a verse known to countless numbers of people. It is memorized in Sunday schools across America. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”. This verse is Easter.
God, because of His great love for humankind, solved an enormous problem for us. He created us in His likeness in order to have a relationship with us. However, through man, sin entered the world. In other words, we messed up. We regarded ourselves and our own desires as more important than serving and following our Creator. Sin formed a chasm between God who is perfect and man who is sinful. The punishment for sin is death – physical and eternal – separation from God for all time now and in the future.
Romans 3:23, another familiar verse heard and remembered by many individuals, says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Each one of us – all – have sin in our lives. Apart from the obvious wrongs we could easily list, even a bad thought or neglecting to do what we should, is missing the mark of perfection. Sin is defined in WordWeb as “estrangement from God” and “a transgression of God’s will”.
Because of God’s great love for us, He chose to solve our problem by giving His only Son – Jesus Christ – as payment for our sin. A perfect sacrifice is the only true and lasting atonement that put a final end to our debt. Jesus willingly gave His life in obedience to His Father so that we could live in heaven eternally and have a relationship with God now and forever.
Imagine the most beautiful gift wrapped carefully in the most magnificent paper and tied with the most beautiful bow you have ever seen. The gift of Jesus is way beyond anything we can imagine or hope for yet it has been handed to us. Why? Because “God so loved the world”.
Do you believe? What do you celebrate at Easter? Jesus’ suffering and death and resurrection for a world in need defines Easter. Jesus is alive and He offers us forgiveness and life forever with Him in heaven. Have you accepted the gift being offered to you? John 3:16 says, “That whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”. It’s not just about bunnies and butterflies…
