EASTER 2001

Spring is a time of renewal of the earth, bulbs start to bloom, grass starts growing and the Easter Bunny makes his appearance along with egg hunts, jelly beans and new clothes. In a few days many of us will  spend Sunday celebrating Christ’s Glorious resurrection. Almost four months ago we celebrated His birth. Some may even spend some time on Friday recalling, with sorrow, His death.

As at Christmas, this is a time of year we want to be a special time for us and our family and friends. And indeed it is. All of us have family, ethnic and religious traditions that we duplicate each year to keep connected to the past and to give us something to look forward to in the future.

What I have found missing in both seasons is the realization and appreciation of God’s love toward us.

I first came to realize God’s love when I prepared for our family communion service some years back. As I read the Scriptures and reflected on Christ’s sacrifice, I became overwhelmed with a sense of how much He loved us to do such a thing. I wept inwardly at the realization and the frustration of not being able to put it in words. I could feel the weight of it, it was overwhelming. At the family service, I tried to express it but utterly failed. To this day, I cannot find the words to express it. I believe God has kept me from expressing it so that I would continue to examine the scriptures for more depth. I don’t think that I will get there this side of eternity.

What follows is an excerpt from a much longer and still incomplete article I am in the process of writing. I hope it will bless you and make you think of God in larger terms than ever before.

This year, may I ask you to focus your attention to what is known as Good Friday? Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, is God’s confirmation of the work done at the cross and His way to show us what we will be at our resurrection. The work Christ came for was done at the cross. Why is it so important? At the cross He said “It is finished.” How could He say that? The last sinner wasn’t forgiven, the last crippled body was not healed, the last dysfunctional family wasn’t restored to “normalcy,” the last wounded marriage was not put together, Satan remained an ever constant threat to God’s people, though he is now a defeated enemy. He could say it because His work was done. The most obvious work was that of salvation of sinners. But it wasn’t the only work. This is not to say that He did not come to save sinners. That was His mission and reason for His death on the cross. If that fact was all we knew and we acted on it by appropriating His death as full payment for our personal sins, that is all we need to know, and even then the depth of that is unfathomable. But there is more: which makes me appreciate Him and His love for me that much more.

What else was Christ’s mission: to preach the gospel to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captive, recover sight to the blind, set at liberty them that are bruised, preach the acceptable year of the Lord, to save that which was lost. Is the meaning of these phrases limited to poor people who have no money, or people whose feelings are hurt, or people being held captive by someone or physically blind people, or people with black and blues on their bodies, or people who have lost their direction? Does it not mean those who know they are poor in themselves and know there is something and someone who can help them find fulfillment; those who are brokenhearted over the human condition and where we have gotten ourselves by our own efforts; those who are captive to habits they know are destructive but know no way out; those who cannot see beyond the next minute, or hour or day or meal and think there is nothing beyond just surviving; those that are bruised in their hearts over the condition of loved ones or the world in general; those that once knew there was someone who could deliver them but have given up hope and remain lost. Nowhere in the New Testament do I find that you accept Christ, He and Peter use the term born again, but we are afraid to use it because many of our own have caused it to fall into disrepute and those that are our enemies misuse the term.  Again, God loved us to send His son to make us born again, to restore us to His original plan for us in Genesis.

Does it just apply to the few short years here and then we get the big reward and “rest.” I think not. God loves us too much to love us for a few years and then send us on vacation. He knows our potentialities, He has great plans for us and a rather large universe to fulfill them in - and plenty of time, an eternity. Can we give our love to such a God? He commands it! Does He do this because He is acting like a spoiled child whom no one loves and He demands someone love Him? I truly believe He demands it for He loves us so much and knows us so well that He knows only He can bring out the potentialities that are in us. And only He loves us so much to make it possible.

To appreciate it we need to return to Genesis and consider what Man was before the fall and God’s plan for us. He was created to reflect God (His image and likeness) and partake in some of God’s attributes: thought, decision making, creativity, moral choices.

We were made to work, live forever, have to fellowship with God, to populate, replenish, and subdue the earth with a companion as the counterpart. And man was presented with a choice: to experience evil and die, or experience the Tree of Life and live forever in fellowship with God. Man fell, died eventually, and produced progeny in his image and likeness: a sinner. We are Adam’s descendants, sinners by nature and by act. Christ came to save us and restore us to live forever and work with God in eternity.

Let’s do some speculation. If man had not sinned, he would be still working to have dominion over the earth and its creatures. If he reproduced himself and lived forever and his descendants lived forever I would think there would have to come a point when earth could not support the population and other planets would have to be inhabited. With God as the instructor and man having no darkness on his intellect or spirit, how creative would he be after 6000 years? One can only imagine. The universe would be man’s “playground.”

That is what Christ restores us to! Through Him we will live forever. Do you think we will be floating around on clouds playing harps for the rest of eternity? I believe we have fallen into that mindset, where all we’re going to is “eternal rest.” Isn’t it more likely we will go back to God’s original plan that we work. Work was not given as a punishment. Man was to till the garden before he sinned. With our resurrected bodies free from the pull of the sinful flesh, our mind and spirit will be free to have the creativity God intended. Our work will be fulfilling and satisfying, not a drudgery. This is what God’s love does.

God is interested in a living daily relationship with each one of us. He cares little what religious label you wear as long as you have a daily walk with Him and converse with Him daily telling Him your hurts, your pain, your joy and gratitude. He knows what hurts you and He grieves with you and wants to make you as whole as you can be in this lifetime and in the next. It was never His plan for us to suffer like this.

In the New Testament, Christ confirms that when He says what good does it do you to gain the world and lose your soul. Man is valued (loved) by God more than man values himself. One man is worth more that the whole universe. God takes responsibility for His creature and begets a Son who dies for salvation from sin and restoration to God’s original plan for man.

Over the last few years, I have gone through a most difficult struggle. But, after all the anger and other expressions of frustration, I know more than ever God loves me and it astounds me because my inner nature comes to the surface and He went to the cross to relieve me of this and to give me things the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor entered into my heart what He has in store for those who love Him. He has taken responsibility for me personally, not just given me an abstract set of rules and regulations to follow, He makes it personal. Can you believe it?  Among billions of human beings, He takes responsibility for me. This is Love beyond measure and comprehension.

It will take an eternity to fully appreciate what God has for us.

Can we understand all things that happen to us in life? The Book of Job tells us that we can’t. Some teachings will tell us that we can trace cause and effect and deal with the cause so that the effect is gone. Again, that is only partially true. Job never learned from man or God the cause of his troubles (Satan’s accusations against man to God). What went on in the spiritual world we know from reading Job but his friends did not inform Job nor did God in the dialogue at the end of the book. Perhaps when Job read the book, he learned it. There are things that happen in the spirit world that affect us that we will never know here and God won’t tell us. Why is that? Job exclaimed: ...”but He knoweth the way that I take...” He is saying that God knows what is in him and there is a sense that whatever is was, it will be completed not in this world but the next and receive its fulfillment. The trials here are to try us like gold, to get the dross out. It will only be when we are resurrected that we will be like Him, Christ.  This world prepares us for the next, the next will be what God had in mind before the fall of man.

God was to have a Kingdom in Genesis. Man was to subdue it. The creativity of participating in the Divine Nature is mind boggling. The Kingdom of God is coming again. It is His rule over us in this world and His “State” in the next.

May I respectfully suggest that at some time in this season, you take a quiet moment alone with God. Ask Him to forgive you for crowding Him and His Son out and for all the other mistakes we’ve accumulated over the years. All of us can think of the unkind word said to someone or about someone. All of us can think of the deepest hurt of our heart that we can’t seem to forgive and get rid of. Sometimes our wrath is aimed at God Himself for an injury we think He’s done to us or allowed something in our life that we don’t deserve. We might have even shaken our fist at Him and screamed at Him. He understands the hurt that provokes us to do such a thing and is ready to restore the relation if we are willing. Perhaps we’ve even transgressed one or more of His Ten Commandments. We may not have violated one of “the big ones,” like hurt our spouse by wanting another person to fill the role only that spouse should fill, but we all have violated one or more of them in some way. Have we stolen time we were paid for by doing nothing? Have we not taken one day in the week to renew our relation with Him and to refresh us physically (He designed one day just for that)? Have we said things “not quite true” to make ourselves look good or someone else look bad? He waits on us with open arms to receive us back, as long as we agree with Him that we have done these things and are ready to put them aside. Let Him warm your heart with His presence now and forever more. Allow His Son to be reborn in your heart to dwell there forever so that Christmas and Easter are not just pleasant holidays.

Eternity and God’s plan through His love awaits us.

With affection,

Jim Sangiorgio & Family