Death is Not the End - The Wonder of Easter

Hi Friends,

Today I read an essay written by my daughter, Joelle, about her life. I read about the death of her precious pony Pippin, and her rat Paris, and further back the death of her first pony, Oreo. What I read made me weep. But not simply from sorrow. Carefully, this not-yet-thirteen year old girl wove her story to show how death wasn't the end, but a tool in the hands of a loving God to transform her, to transform us.


Death is not the end.

Easter teaches us that.

And as I pondered her words, I remembered an excerpt from Wrestling with Wonder about the death of Christ. It went like this…

EXCERPT:

            Death.

            I tremble as I type the word.

            Death.

            We’ve all tasted its bitter fruit. Death of a loved one, death of a dream, death of a relationship ... the death of our hopes and the promises of a bright future.

            With Mary, we’ve all knelt in the darkness at the foot of a cross. We’ve all wept and shuddered, knowing death has come near.

            And then it arrives. Death.

            It is finished.

            And yet, God has only just begun to change the world, our world. He has only begun to change us. And we discover that death is not the end we once believed. It is but a doorway to the transformation of our souls.

            Mary could not have seen it from where she knelt on Golgotha. She could not have known as she looked up at her dead son, as she experienced the worst moment of her life, that this very moment would change everything. It was the moment of inexplicable glory.

            When all was lost ... all was saved. You were saved, I was saved, Mary herself was saved from all her sins. This was the moment God broke through and accomplished the most amazing, wondrous, incredible, beautiful thing of all time.

            Her worst moment.

            His death.

            The moment of amazing wonder.