How Can We Be Easter People?

As I was walking Charles on this beautiful spring afternoon, I had a few quiet moments in the midst of a busy busy few months to collect my thoughts. Easter is one of my favorite holidays, and spring is one of my favorite seasons. As I think about this Easter season, I began to ponder what Easter means to me. Easter is about starting over, about second chances, and about a gracious God who gave an undeserving people, an unbelievable gift of everlasting life. As a recipient of such a blessing, I began to think about what it means to be a good steward of the life I have been give on this earth.

Implicit in the understanding that we live on this earth is an understanding that one day our time here will come to an end. I hope the end of my time on earth comes when I am many many years old with a face full of wrinkles, two hearing aids, and a handful of great grandchildren I've gotten to love on, while I am laying in bed next to me sweet sweet husband who I love a million times more than the day I met him.

As believers, we find peace and hope in that our time on earth will be followed by everlasting life in heaven. I think this is a hard promise to grab hold of sometimes. I have been very blessed in many ways. I have a hard time comprehending a day when I will be ready for my life on earth to come to a close because I find such joy in the life I have been given. I think faith allows us to believe in the promise of everlasting life when it is not something logic will quite allow us to comprehend. I think of the times in my life when I have experienced great joy. Beach trips and holidays with my family, my dad's recovery from heart surgery, graduating from college, spending a semester in Washington D.C., meeting, falling in love and marrying my husband and bringing Charles home for the first time are all experiences that top my list. My mind cannot comprehend how wonderful everlasting life must be to exceed the joy I have felt in those moments. Yet this is what God promises for his followers, and in that promise I find great comfort.

I pray that with the time I have been given, I will be a good steward of God's blessings. I will use my gifts and talents to glorify God. I will try to love others who I don't feel like loving in the same way God has loved me when I haven't deserved it. I pray for myself and my loved ones to live full lives. That when we near the end of our days, that we can look back on our lives and feel fulfilled, satisfied, and flat out tired from living and loving with everything we have in us.

Then I began to think about death. I think people deal with knowing a loved one is dying in a myriad of ways. Two primary ways come to mind. I think many people when they learn a loved one is dying seek to surround that person with love and comfort, to keep them company, and help them know they are not alone. I think others pull away in an effort to distance themselves so the pain won't be quite as strong when the day comes that they have to say goodbye. I tend to be more of the type to want to spend as much time as possible with people I love when I know their days are few.

How different would my life be, if I loved those around me so fully and completely everyday as I seek to love them when I know we are running out of time?  I want to strive to live my life and love people every hour of every day. I want to surround those around me with love, comfort, friendship and companionship while they are living not just when they are dying. I know with certainty this is not an easy task, nor one that I will be able to execute with perfection.  To me this is how we can be Easter people living the meaning of Easter every day of the year.