Just as it has done so since time began, planet earth has tilted on its axis, bringing harbingers of Spring to the Shenandoah Valley.  In my wee garden, three yellow crocus blossoms announce the Resurrection.  And another family of sparrows have taken residence in my garden chalet...a spring serendipity. 

“If you had to choose one word to ....express the very essence of the New Testament faith, this word (Resurrection) would have to be the most characteristic”, wrote James S. Stewart in a sermon he titled “The Power of Resurrection”.  It is momentous to ponder the burning certainty of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul that He whom they knew so intimately had conquered death and was alive forevermore.  Christ had risen from the dead.  At a time when cynics and pundits are writing the obituary of Christian faith, true believers are crying out, “Man, don’t you know that God is alive!”  A faithful remnant partake of that same power which captured the early believers, giving them the same moral energy, making them resurrected personalities, whole, brave, and vital, throbbing with new life.  The New Testament saints wrote about those same gifts for all who will believe Jesus is alive today and become His disciples, tapping resurrection power for daily living.  Believing undaunted that we live in two worlds, two kingdoms, at once, we tap the resources of the kingdom of heaven for confronting the powers of darkness. 

We need the year-long relevance of Easter to combat violence, cruelty, hatred, lawlessness, and terrorism.  Writes James S. Stewart: “The power that was strong enough to get Jesus out of the grave and thus to set going the whole Christian movement across the centuries, mighty enough to shatter and confound the hideous demonic alliance of evil, creative enough to smite death with resurrection – this power is in action still....We are celebrating a magnificent incontrovertible reality.  And therefore you and I, amid all the battering dilemmas and disillusionments of contemporary history, can lift up our heads, knowing and rejoicing that God still reigns, and that God is in the field when He is most invisible.”