It is safe to say that Easter is my favorite holiday. To take time to re-center ourselves, to focus on what Christ did for us, when we are so very undeserving. From Palm Sunday, through Holy Week, to the triumphant celebration of the Risen Christ, defeating Sin and Death. We enter into Holy Week in solemnity, contemplative of who our Savior is, and we triumphantly come to a culmination of celebrating Christ who is risen. What a joy!
This past Easter, I had the honor of worshipping with my wife at First United Methodist Church of Port St. Joe, participating in their unique bay side service, where the call to worship was delivered from a blast of a conch shell. During that Easter service, while looking across St. Joe bay, I was struck by a new perspective, one which caused me to cherish the Easter Season even more.
The perspective is this: perhaps more so than any other Christian holiday, Easter is a singularly unifying day of celebration. As I listened to the conch shell, blown loud and clear across the bay, I could not help but think of my brothers around the world, knowing that they too, if only for a day, were celebrating with me our Risen Lord. It was a unifying experience, and one that has altered how I think about Easter. Not only is Easter a celebration of Christs victory, but now also it is a time of unification, one day in which denominational and traditional differences are set aside, and in one voice the global Christian community declares ‘Allelujah! Christ the Risen King!’.
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27