The Open Door

From our house to your house our family sends you greetings and best wishes for the most wonderful Easter you have ever experienced. Even if your life over the past year has been marked with the greatest suffering, the greatest sadness and loss in your entire life, this can still be the greatest Easter you have ever experienced.

How can that be so? It can be so if you spend this Easter truly focusing on the meaning of Easter. We should come to this moment of the year with an acute and refreshed sense of awareness of all that Jesus Christ did for us at the cross of Calvary and through the empty tomb!

When I was a first grade student at North Shore Elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida, I witnessed a transformation that would stay with me all of my life. No doubt, my teacher, Mrs. Stevens had no idea that I would be so impressed by our little project. Someone brought a caterpillar to school in a jar and my teacher put it on the shelf at the back of the room so we could see it.

I watched it on a daily basis. Soon an amazing thing began to happen as the caterpillar began to spin a cocoon. In a short period of time, the caterpillar was entombed in a tomb of his own making and by all accounts seemed to be dead. Days went by. Then one morning as we came into the classroom and began our day’s activities, Mrs. Stevens noticed a peculiar sound that kept interrupting her teaching. It was the sound of something flapping around in between the papers of some charts hanging at the back of the room. She went over to check it out and then called for all of us to come and have a look.

There, between the charts, was a magnificently beautiful and huge moth. It seemed trapped as its wings continued to beat the paper. Mrs. Stevens said, “Boys and girls, do you suppose that this beautiful moth came from the caterpillar’s cocoon?” We ran over to the jar containing the cocoon and sure enough, there was a hole in the end of the cocoon and it was empty. The caterpillar had been transformed into a beautiful moth and the moth had flown over to the charts hanging on the rod at the back of the room and was flapping his wings and beating the papers.

Having seen this miracle of nature, it was not such a difficult thing to see that God could bring about a transformation of far greater significance. Jesus would die on a Roman cross and be placed in Joseph’s borrowed tomb. There He was wrapped round about with grave cloths and shut up in the tomb for three days. Then in the greatest event to ever occur on this planet, Jesus Christ came out of the grave cloths and out of the tomb in a transformed, resurrected body! The world has never been the same since!

In 1 Corinthians 15, referred to by many as the Resurrection Chapter of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul said, “Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

From this amazing text it is very clear that everything we believe, feel and know by faith about life here and life to come hangs upon the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. Hallelujah! It is true! Christ is alive!