He is Risen...Come Awake!

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. - 1 Corinthians 15:17 (NRSV)

We have been in a five week study of the evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus. Yesterday morning, Easter 2011, was absolutely electric in the Park Chapel Worship Center. We were celebrating because the resurrection gives us hope! Richard Garland wrote:

ISRAEL'S Roman occupiers had an answer for troublemakers: nail them to a cross! The cross should have been the end of Jesus, scattering his friends and followers. It took amazing courage for the women to come near Jesus' borrowed grave site. But what they discovered would turn the world upside down: "He is not here; for he has risen."

Resurrection lies outside the realm of ordinary proof. But sometimes proof can come from something neither visible nor understood. For example, Einstein predicted that a large source of gravity could actually "bend" space, causing light rays to change direction. Later, demonstrating this change of direction proved Einstein's theory.

So consider Jesus' dispirited disciples and friends, hiding, fearing for their lives. Yet they became a force that changed the world. Something changed them profoundly. We cannot prove or even fully comprehend the Resurrection, but we can see its effect as the disciples experienced Jesus alive again.

Without the Resurrection, the cross would be only a harsh reminder of human cruelty. But the Resurrection "bends the light" to reveal what has been hidden, showing that even death does not stand in the way of the power of Love.

The evidence is overwhelming! Jesus Christ is alive. Easter is the greatest day that ever dawn from the greatest story ever told of the greatest life ever lived! We have hope, may we never stop living it! You know I love ya, Don