Easter All Year Long

You hear it in holiday songs and read it in Christmas cards; it’s the plaintive subject of Christmas sermons and children’s pageants and December devotionals: “Why can’t it be Christmas all year long?” Singers and writers and speakers often suggest ways to carry the aura of joy and celebration and general goodwill on into the coming New Year...

At Easter, we don’t have to work so hard at finding a way to turn once-a-year into a year-long observance. It’s already been done. While researching Easter symbols recently, I came across the following sentence on annieshomepage.com: “Sunday is an Easter symbol that is also observed the year-round. Christians traditionally worship on Sunday because that day is associated with the Resurrection.”

Maybe that’s one reason why Easter is my favorite holiday. It doesn’t come and go like the others. It’s always here, the first day of every week, the “Lord’s Day.” It’s just that once a year we stop and look at it directly, and see it afresh for what it is – a victory celebration in honor of Jesus Christ, Lord over sin and Satan and death and the grave, Lord of life and power and truth, Lord in you and in me, Lord alone and forever. And every subsequent Sunday morning worship service is its own “resurrection” of that celebration.

So come to FAC this week and we’ll celebrate Easter. Come the following Sunday and we’ll celebrate it all over again - because every Lord’s Day we praise a living Savior and hear in the strain of a hymn or a confident prayer or an encouraging Scripture something that echoes those final words spoken by Easter:

“It is finished... Christ is risen... Death is conquered... Satan is defeated... We are alive forevermore!”