The Monday after Easter

[Don't worry, grandparents, Easter Part 2 with pictures of the girls is coming.]

The day after a holiday can be a let-down, can't it?  I always found this to be somewhat true for me.  Until this year. 

This year, I've found both the day after Christmas and the day after Easter to be almost more thrilling than the day of the actual event.  Why?  Because on those days, I got to awake to the happy reality that the truths we had celebrated so vigorously the day before were still true.  What's even greater than celebrating a miraculous event like the incarnation or the resurrection?  Getting to celebrate it every day because it's still  true.

Over the last few years I've been struck by how much we American Christians, particularly we Reformed types, talk about the Cross and how little we talk about the Resurrection.  Thankfully, many other people (who are more spiritual and smarter than me) have noticed this as well and are talking about it and even writing books about it.  For me personally, I've come to see that in my life, neglecting the Resurrection means that I neglect knowing Jesus as an actual, living person.  We pay lip service that Christianity is "not a religion but a relationship," but how many of us are actually daily experiencing our relationship with Jesus?  He is risen...yet do you interact with Him as a living, knowable person?  If we are not, then we are missing out on the whole point of the Cross and the Empty Tomb. 

"This is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God..." John 17:3

"Limiting the resurrection either to the past or to the future makes the present risenness of Jesus largely irrelevant, safeguards us from interference with the ordinary rounds and daily routines of our lives, and preempts communion now with Jesus as a living person.  In other words, the resurrection needs to be experienced as present risenness.  If we take seriously the word of the risen Christ, 'Know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time' (Matt. 28:28), we should expect that He will be actively present in our lives."  -Brennan Manning, Abba's Child

Oh, then "let us know, let us press on to know the Lord!"  (Hosea 6:3)