by Pastor Bob Lawrenz
Did you feel it this past week? The pressure of the Christmas and Holiday Season is gone? As busy as the holidays get, we enjoy every one of them, and when they are over, we breathe a sigh of relief. My neighbors put their tree out to the curb the day after Christmas. Maybe you’re among those that does not take it down until after the Twelve Days of Christmas. It really doesn’t matter when the tree comes down; the “pressure” is off, so to speak. Your shoulders relax a bit and your calendar is less congested, and you may already be reminiscing over the new memories of “Holidays 2013,” all of them.
The next big holidays for the Church are Good Friday and Resurrection Day. National holidays are coming up though: Martin Luther King Day, President’s Week to name a couple; “Hallmark Holidays” are coming too, like Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day (unless you are Irish, and then St. Pat’s is a National Holiday”). And don’t forget that April 15th immediately follows April 1st.
We live from month to month and day to day with calendars that are marked for special days. If you are a Christian, you will relish every day and give thanks to the Lord Jesus for giving you a desire and a hope that better days are ahead. Hope is that big motivator that propels us forward with a purpose. The calendar will slip by regardless, but without hope, the days become drudgery. Every new day should be considered a fresh new opportunity.
Even as Believers, if we hope only in Christ, we are “men most miserable” the scriptures say. To focus on only Jesus is to narrow our field of vision to His suffering and death, for His life teaches us that the flesh must be put to death. It seems that drawing hope from that is an exercise in frustration because as long as we are alive, we are trapped in fleshly bodies that must be put off. What I truly put my hope in is the New Life of the Resurrection that Jesus has availed to us all!
Jesus put off the flesh for us as an example, but He looked beyond the cross to the joy that lay before Him. HOPE! Jesus had an assurance of hope that better days are ahead. For us to live is Christ, and to die is gain! Holidays will come and go, but stop and consider the hope we have before us… Resurrection, Redemption, and New Life!
1 Corinthians 15:19,20 - “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are all men most miserable. But now, Christ is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”
