If your home is anything like ours then the physical evidence of your Easter celebrations may well have disappeared. The mountain of eggs that appeared on the breakfast table that morning has been consumed, and the packaging discarded or recycled. We may have enjoyed time with family and friends and extra holiday days that gave us time to relax. But that’s all over now and life has moved on.
But if that really is the case then we’ve missed something at the heart of the Easter story, because it’s an event that, if true, is not simply about remembering something that happened in the past, but one which propels us into a changed future. The story is told of a blind English gentleman who fell in love. Shortly before his wedding day he underwent pioneering surgery to reverse his blindness, and it happened that the bandages were removed on the day of his wedding. For the first time he saw his beautiful bride and his heart soared even more than it had before. His life was changed forever and he quite literally never saw things in the same way again.
The message of Jesus’ resurrection is that the world is changed forever. A living God invites us to follow Him into a new life, and when we do so every day becomes a celebration.