EASTER CONFESSION

I have a confession: I don't care as much for Christmas as I do for Easter. As a Christ follower, I am blessed by our Savior's birth, but it is his death and resurrection that defines my moment. It's the moment when you know that you know you will follow him, no matter what. There are some who remember it as the day they gave their hearts to Christ. I know it as much more. I was five years old when I gave him mine, but he captured my heart in a chain of events several years later...

I sat on the floor between my family's living and dining room watching the once-controversial, made-for-television movie, Jesus of Nazareth. At the time, there was a buzz over the possible graphic depiction of the crucifixion scene on national television. Quite unheard of then -- commonplace now. As I sat amidst the frivolity and mayhem of my family, I was transfixed over the destruction of my Sunday School tales. The reality of nail-pierced hands and feet revealed gaping holes where nails the size of railroad spikes were driven in his innocent flesh. His blood more than trickled from a neat and tidy cross. It wasted fully from a rugged, gnarly tree support.

"Why?" I wept quietly that night. I felt I had to ask in light of new evidence, new truth, new reality. If you had to confess, wouldn't you want to know why Jesus would endure such torture? My defining moment was being addressed. With each wrongful blow, he was setting things right between us and the Father. He came to conquer sin, not in birth, but in death and new life!

Christ's Easter confession...Isaiah 53:5, 6 - Be he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.