Easter is usually a time of vibrancy and life. For many of us, Easter includes dressing up in bright pastels, gathering with family and friends, and maybe even hunting for colored eggs. Those traditions seem wholly inappropriate given our current situation.
Instead, we’re left wondering what happened to Easter in the midst of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has turned our world upside-down, causing many to question where God is in the mess. How can we celebrate the life and joy represented by Easter at a time like this?
But for those who are open enough or desperate enough to look again, I believe this Easter has the potential to be more important than any in our lifetime.
Our world is searching for answers. A recent study found that internet searches around prayer doubled for every 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. But why do people turn to God at a time when God feels absent? Could it be that we deeply want to believe in the God of Easter — a God who suffers with us, for us, and overcomes sin and death? Has there ever been a moment the collective human race was more longing for such a God?
If you are not feeling very hopeful ahead of Easter 2020, I have good news for you: you are in good company. The first Easter didn’t seem like good news for Jesus’ followers in the week leading up to it either. No one would have looked at a beaten Jesus, unjustly accused, abandoned and hung on a cross and said, “That is good news.”
But that’s exactly the paradoxical way God works. Through Jesus, God was doing something no one would have expected to show us how much he cares. Instead of being some impersonal deity, sitting on a royal golden throne surrounded by angels, Jesus became flesh and blood. He walked our soil and felt our pain. This is what makes the Christian faith so unique: our God suffers with and for us. The story of Easter teaches us that when our world feels upside-down, God is often at work setting it right-side-up.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Nick Hall
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