Easter Sunday

Most Easter Sundays since we've been married, Landon and I have spent it with my parents at their church, where I grew up. It's nice being there.

This Sunday the sermon was basically about how Jesus rising from the dead really did change things. It changed our world and it changed lives and the reality of it should be something that causes us to feel both ecstatic and trembling, as we think about how it changes things.

I want that--because so often I feel like I just accept his death and burial and resurrection as truth because it's what I grew up believing. But I want it to rock my world, change my world, change me. I want it to be something that I'm in awe of and so, so thankful for and not something I just take for granted. I want to the awe and the fear that the women that discovered that Jesus was risen felt, because they knew nothing would ever be the same.

I want to feel that and live that and I want people that don't know Jesus to want what we, we know Him, have.

I've been reading Francine River's Mark of the Lion series, which tells the stories of multiple people living in Rome only years after Jesus was hung on the cross--a young slave girl who is a Christian, a family she works for who worship the Roman gods, a young German man who was captured and made to be a Roman gladiator and various other people who they come in contact with. I'm nearing the end of the first book and it's been neat to read it this weekend and as I think about what this weekend is celebrating--from Good Friday to Easter Sunday--I'm so encouraged by the story of this young Christian's faith and love for God and compassion for the family she works for, whose lives are so empty. I know it's a fiction story, but it's made me think and made me want to have the relationship with God that she does and reach out to unbelievers with the compassion and love and sincerity that she does. If you've never read the book I would highly recommend it.

After church today we got Starbucks and had some time to sit and just talk with my parents, which was really nice, and then we met up with Matthew at the house for lunch and to hang out for a little while. Again, I'm so thankful that we live close to family--and thankful that we live in a country where we are free to worship God--and that God loves us so much that He sent His son to die for us and then used His power to raise Him 3 days later, taking away the power of death and allowing us to spend eternity with Him.

God, please don't let me take that for granted--or forget how much it changes our lives.

And now, after a fun late afternoon at the dog park, where both us and the dogs ran around for about 2 hours...

... and a fun bike ride down a new bike path in our neighborhood, we're settling in for the night, tired, but thankful for a good weekend and a good God.