Day 3325 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 28:6 NIV

Just as He said.

It seems a new sort of novel every single day, this opportunity to seek and share the Word with whomever might care to see, to read. It’s an entirely enormous undertaking, and yet one that I am completely consumed with at this point as it seems to me one of very few things that I’ve the chance to do that’s actually worth the doing. And yet it brings such a gravity as I know well that I’m simply only able to be sufficiently insufficient as how can words I type possibly convey even a fraction of what His already have?

No, this day here is one of those which remind of the inability to do as He’s called me to, and yet so too a renewed determination to keep on trying despite such inability.

For the general undertone that I hope and pray shines throughout these posts every day is that He is in every way all He’s ever said He is. There isn’t a weakness in His way, not a word missing in His will, not a single letter out of place in that letter written to lead us home. That very contemplation brings a newfound contentment every time I think about it. For that God didn’t stop at breathing out His Word for our benefit, but that He came and lived it for our betterment is that miracle most indescribable that I find myself chasing every day.

And while this one is seemingly no different than the 3324 which came before, somehow it does feel quite the beginning as that exact thought was the first I found when I awoke this Resurrection morning.

That as of today, it’s all new all over again. That this morning brought us a reminder of the victory into which we’re called to come and share, a tomb laid open and left empty, leaving plenty of room now for our old lives and their wasted ways. That because that stone couldn’t hold Him, that the grave couldn’t restrain Him, that death has indeed lost its sting, well, so too might we now live as if life is forever new in ways that we never knew we needed before.

Because such is the sadness of sorrow’s blindness. It has kept us, may still keep us from seeing into the life we wish not to walk. It inspires us to miss the moments made of miracles making a way we’ve never imagined before. It’s this sort of sin-stained stagnancy which stymies and sullies and soils the souls which we’ve bought and sold as if trinkets and toys worth less than the price paid. It convinces us that sin is still our friend simply because we understand not enmity nor the eternity which it so defiantly deserves.

And yet such blindness has all but become us. It’s not merely a trait of temporality as many might let on. It isn’t a passing fancy found as we fight for feelings over forever. It isn’t some wind-blown buffoonery that blows away with another insanity storming in by this time tomorrow. No, rather spiritual blindness is us down to the bone, into the marrow, so deep that it would seem that nothing we know of might help let go of this blindness we’ve become.

Such is why this day came in which He came to show us something we’d never seen before.

That is the enormity of Resurrection Sunday. It’s the moment in which eyes which hadn’t seen are now given the chance to change that. It’s the pinnacle of a most personal miracle in which each of us might now wonder as to what might change, what we might do differently now that something so strange has happened as that tomb being emptied by the One who’d entered it seemingly unwillingly. That’s the irony in all this as still seen in the ways in which this wicked world seeks still to sully His sovereignty.

Yes, this place still just doesn’t get it as I reckon that’s the weight of living amongst so many with eyes that cannot see and ears that will not hear and hearts that only know to beat the tune of hatred and misunderstanding. I guess that even something as His having proven Himself all He said He is simply is not enough for some.

Perhaps such is why this day allows us to now learn to lean into the impossible, the illogical, the entirely unpopular and even publicly confounding.

Because each of us have to now decide where we stand as He’s made clear the line as well as provided the proof we need for such a decision to made. He has done all He can to break through our blindness, and so now it’s on us to decide if we’ll believe in His better or remain bent toward something other. Which is, granted, an entirely difficult choice to make as it simply must be made within this way of life that we’ve come to live and that we live among others likewise losing their own.

But, again, today is the sort of new beginning that literally makes all things new. So, shall we be made new or refuse such opportunity for the sake of the apparent impossibility?

After all, empty tomb? Dead not dead no more? I mean, usually when someone is buried, they tend to stay that way. And so it does seem to eyes that have seen nothing of this sort before a right insanity, for our belief as misunderstood among those who know only disbelief has us all but certain that death is about as final as it gets. And so why should anyone venture into wondering as to whether such could be as wrong as logic and science and society says it must?

Indeed, everything we know, everything we are, everything we hear says that if Christ were real, and the tomb likewise, then He must still be there, or was up until the point of dust returning to dust. Right?

Well, that’s all well and good except that He’s not really been one to remain within the limits of what we think we know. And He even told us everything that would happen, all that He would endure so that the brutality of it all wouldn’t be quite as shocking as it still seems to be. But, and even beyond that, He told us that on the third day, He’d not be where this world insisted He go, imagined He’d stay.

No, that is the excitement of this Father we follow via this faith that’s found us. He’s not one for worldly suggestion nor insistence. Not really interested in doing as He’s told by those who’ve no business pretending the power to tell their Maker what to do. No, clay says nothing to the potter, and so nor shall we say anything to the Father as He made us, not the other way around.

And that humility, should it be found by any, is the proverbial key which unlocks the cells in which we’ve sat inside this assumption that death is death and that life is only lived up until death proves itself the finality we fear.

But you see, I think that’s a rather big part of what He came to prove. That our fear is often misplaced. That our worry and the weirdness of the things over which we worry are but wasted and wearisome as they keep our eyes glued to seeing only what we assume is seen. And well, as I’ve long suspected and find myself now seeking, what if there exists an entire existence outside and well beyond our sight’s belief? What if there are sounds we’ve never heard, messages that have fallen through the cracks we’ve craved and carved in this insatiable search for sin?

Yes, what if we, of the much we think we know, know nothing?

What if we know nothing of life, of faith, of hope, of reason, of reality, of death? What if we know nothing of anything that matters from here inside lives stained by worldly lies that let us live as if life is a matter of meaning only with meaning should we make it of things that matter to most? What if what most think must matter means nothing? Indeed, what if what most do, say, think, assume only keeps them from living at all?

That is the death we’ve all already known! Thinking we know enough to live life. Believing only that life is lived by sight, steps following eyes only as far as eyes might see. Hearts growing colder, love failing further, truth being forgotten and thus hope fading fast. That is the life we see, is it not? A growing array of hate and harm, all of humanity spiraling into insanity as we turn only on one another rather than to the One who came to save us from such calamity.

Yes, that is what Christ achieved for any and all who might dare to believe both beyond the grave and beyond themselves. That we might cease with this insanity and seek something more than vanity or prosperity as defined and demanded by a world which knows far more death than life. For what is living in us if we live only for what exists within what this world says is either important or possible? What can we know of life when all we’ve done with life is live it like the world has chosen?

No, such is indeed only death, and contrary to Christ, our pasts prove we’ve not the ability to roll stones out of our way as instead we only stumble over them back into the disbelief of fear and weakness.

But that is what’s all allowed to change now. All we’ve known of life, made of life, done in life, it’s all invited to die so that in Christ we might share in what He achieved and walk out of our old death into new life, a life now spent seeking eternity with the Father rather than futility with the world. And while such still seems impossible to most, that’s okay. Yes, it’s okay that many will think me strange for this belief I have in something so impossible as life after death defining a hope that’s not bound to a world that's passing away nor my fleeting time within such temporality.

I’ve spent enough of this little time I have stuck inside the assumption that all there is to be seen is all there is to be known of life itself. Yes, and because of those many years wasted in a way of this world’s unbelief, I now find no excitement in living a life waiting to die.

No, having now heard of His invitation to share in what He did when that stone was shoved out of His way, well, I find more reason to get the death of me out of the way so that He might live in me from here onward toward that home I’ve absolutely no reason now to doubt in being as real as anything I’ve seen before. Because if He’s done as He said He would, rise and revive and reveal such hope as that home He said He’s prepared, well why should any not believe?

For if that stone has proven Him a Man of His Word, well then Heaven is real and it does have a place for any and all who dare to believe beyond themselves and the death they’ve chosen for far too long now.

That’s the excitement of this Easter weekend. It’s that He did everything He said He would, and that because of that, so too might we trust in the reasons for which He said He would do it. To set us free. To bring about our forgiveness so to make us new. To bring us to life again. To breathe hope into these dry bones so that we might have something to hold that didn’t require our strength or understanding to keep. To prove that He holds us in His hands, and that it’s those same hands that have now overcome the grave.

Friends, what are we waiting for?

This is indeed the most joyous of days for it is the celebration of His proving Himself all He said He is. Just as He said. That is where I find all the hope, all the joy, all the meaning and purpose and wealth of life’s worth! That if He said it, then it is truth in ways that not even death can deny. And so in Him we have nothing to doubt, nothing to worry about, nothing to fear, not even our failure to figure out this faith and the many impossibilities He will prove not nearly as impossible as we imagined.

Let us never again live life on the outside of the tomb as that is not where life is, for He said otherwise. No, let us rather rage into that grave so that we might share in all He said. For all that He has said is for our good, and friends, He has proven Himself the epitome of faithful.

And this day is the one in which we remember just how reliable He truly is. For if death couldn’t hold Him, and if He holds us, well then death has lost its sting and you and I are now free to believe in something so beautiful that we shan’t allow this world to steal our focus from following the Son into the hope He has proven Himself well capable of providing.

Happy Easter my friends! He is indeed risen, and since we’re all invited, may we allow Him to lead us back to life again as well. Because He didn’t die that we might live in doubt, but that He could prove Himself every reason we need to leave our death behind and never doubt again.

So it’s into the tomb, as that’s where life is waiting.

Just as He said.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold