Dear Friends,

April begins on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week and is quickly engulfed by the first four weeks of the Easter season.  What a wonderful time of the year!  It takes a full seven weeks, “a week of Sundays,” to take it all in.  And even then we’ve barely scratched the surface.

How important is Easter?  It is the center-piece of Christian faith.  Everything we believe about God and our relationship to him revolves around Christ’s resurrection.

Have you ever imagined your life without Easter faith?  Maybe there was a time you can remember before you were a Christian.  Perhaps during that period you didn’t give the claim that Jesus was raised to life again much thought, and it’s only now, when you are a Christian, that the good news of Christ’s resurrection is so pivotal for you.

Most of us can’t even begin to imagine life without that core belief.  We’ve known the joy of Christian faith our whole lives.  Life would seem meaningless and absurd without the joy and certainty which Easter gives us.  We agree with St. Paul when he says, “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ. . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.   But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:14-20).

Still celebrating with you!
Ron