Motivation Monday - A Monday To Live Into The New
“Easter is the entire crux of our faith. It is the only reason we have to hope again. We have become so used to being thrown off guard, shocked by world events and a sweeping virus, that our hope has diminished into a frayed thread wavering in the wind of adversity.
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Did you, like me, prepare your heart in anticipation of Easter? It was the one sure, unchanging sacred, profound remembrance and celebration that you could count on in a world of constant change. Did you reflect on the cross and its significance? Did you feel the long, heavy pause between Good Friday and Easter Sunday — waiting for the discovery of an empty grave and a risen Savior?
And then it came! He came! He is Risen!
And then it’s Monday. Again.
A New Hope
The temptation is to treat Easter like it’s an ending. The eggs have all been found, Jesus is risen, many of us went to church, and whatever we gave up for lent is back in our lives again. Now it’s back to whatever life has been in our new normal.
But nothing was normal after Jesus.
Easter was a revolution.
Easter was a scandalous reversing of our human trajectory of birth to death.
Easter made it possible to go from death to life.
It was the day after which nothing was the same ever again.
When a man who claims to be God rises from the dead, “business as usual” isn’t a thing.
Easter is the entire crux of our faith. It is the only reason we have to hope again. We have become so used to being thrown off guard, shocked by world events and a sweeping virus, that our hope has diminished into a frayed thread wavering in the wind of adversity.
Easter resurrects not only our humanity, but our hope.
A New Identity
If there was ever a time for significant life changes, it should be the Monday after Easter.
Because Easter is a beginning, not an ending.
It’s THE beginning, the fresh start all of our hearts long for. It’s about the sacrificial love-chosen death, relentless love, and revolutionary power of our God.
The cross, the empty grave and the Resurrected Lamb not only give us a reason to hope for change, they give us the power to change.
Rather than us trying to change from our own efforts, the resurrection changes us.
“If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
We come to the Monday after Easter a changed people because Jesus’ resurrection gave us a new identity. My identity is not in the choices I make or what I accomplish, but in who Christ’s resurrection has made me to be.
A New Boldness
The life of the disciples after meeting the resurrected Jesus reminds me of this.
“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” (John 20:19-20).
It was the first day of the week. The disciples had locked themselves away out of fear. Everything Jesus had taught, everything He had said or done — it all seemed like a distant memory now. In Acts 4:13, they are preaching to the Jewish leaders they had been hiding from.
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13)
Something happened in that locked room that radically transformed them from fearful, anxious men into witnesses that would not be silenced, would not be ashamed, would not stop sharing what Jesus had done — even at the cost of their own lives.
The resurrection was everything for them now. The cross had been the death of everything they had hoped or believed was true. But it wasn’t the final end. It was only the end of who they had been, and it was the beginning of who they truly were meant to be.
When Jesus came back to life, the disciples came alive.
And so can you.
Your fear can vanish in the presence of the Risen Christ. Your anxiety can be transformed into bold and brave declarations of what Jesus has done for you.
It’s time to live into the new.
I continue to pray this scripture over you from Genesis 51:7: “Lord, create a Genesis week through the chaos of my life.”
I believe in you.
Cathie