Jesus is alive, and so are we!

The stone was rolled away last Sunday. The big Easter week is now behind us. It was a big week.

You arrived at church, Wednesday night, for the Tenebra service, not the prayer service you usually attend.

Then there was the church service you attended with a friend, on Maundy Thursday.

Your family arrived at 7:00 p.m. for service on Good Friday.

You might have participated in a Seder meal during the week.

Then the Easter Sonrise Service (which was actually about three hours after sunrise) followed by the Easter Service.

Were you exhausted from all the extracurricular activities, or are your spiritual batteries recharged after last week?

This week we have drifted back to normalcy on the church scene. Easter is kind of like going to Macy’s, or any other high end shopping store, and shopping for women’s shoes. If you have ever been in the store and browsed the women’s shoe department, you can’t believe all the choices. Now check out the men’s shoes (as I did this past week), looking for a pair to go with my suit for my son’s wedding on April 25th. There is nothing in the men’s shoe department. It is discriminating. You go from thousands of styles in the women’s department to, like, four in the men’s. Similarly, we go from being overwhelmed by Easter week to the old back to normal routine.

How can we overcome the “post-Easter Blues”? During my quiet time this week God had me reading in I Corinthians 15:14ff. - "And if Christ was not raised all our preaching is useless and your trust in God is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God, for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave, but that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation of your sins."

In this new church plant in Corinth some of the believers did not believe in a bodily resurrection. The proof that our earthly bodies will be resurrected is the resurrection of the Lord. Do you want to chase the “post-Easter Blues” away? All you have to do is check out the preceding verses in I Corinthians 15 and realize that there were over 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus Christ! Would a court of law believe 500 eyewitnesses? Would an atheist believe 500 eyewitnesses? Would a person living at 1433 Oak St. believe 500 eyewitnesses? Would you?

Easter changes everything! How do we shake off the “post-Easter Blues”? We dance for joy that the resurrection happened in history, at a specific time, and it changes everything on a daily, monthly, yearly basis, until Jesus returns.

We do not wait until Easter (as the world does) to jump for joy at Christ's resurrection. Easter happened over 2,000 years ago when some women ran to an empty tomb to prepare a dead body with burial spices and discovered, as we do, every day, that Jesus is ALIVE and we are too. "Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus," every day! (Romans 6:11)