Easter

I woke up this morning in a new home. My first morning in my new home was Easter morning.

How can I explain to you what I felt when I rolled over in bed and saw what a beautiful day it was outside?

This is the first Easter I’ve ever felt anything. This is the first Good Friday, the first Easter Sunday, which I had any emotion at all. Not because I didn’t understand, not because I didn’t believe, not because I didn’t appreciate… but something happened to me this past year.

My heart got wrapped up in this whole mess.

But my heart is not wrapped up in the crucified Jesus. I am grateful, eternally and wholeheartedly grateful. But I didn’t fall in love with the pierced and broken Jesus.

I fell in love with the risen Jesus. The one who looked like a gardener. The one who shook the tomb and the one the rock feared. The one who got uncomfortably close to Thomas and whispered, “Believe…”

I watched a clip from a movie this morning, which depicts Jesus as a laughing man. A man with light in his eyes. A man who touched people’s faces and held their hands and joked with them. I am overwhelmed with the simple thought that sin had separated us from our Creator for so long that he became human – just so he could be close to us forever.

Normally, I completely disagree with media’s interpretation of the Christ, but this brought tears to my eyes.

I think about the Ethiopian man I met who had leprosy. He weaves rugs outside of the hospital, using the nubs of his fingers to tighten the weft. I remember the joy in his eyes when we got close and told him his work was beautiful.

I watched another clip from the same movie this afternoon, where the Matthew 8 leper was depicted as an elderly black man. And Jesus healed him, touching his face, hugging him, and rejoicing with him. A thought then crossed my mind.

Just like the blind man – whose new eyes saw Jesus first—the leper’s new hands would touch Jesus first.

What some may not know is that leprosy does not cause you to lose your limbs. Leprosy causes you to lose feeling in them. Because you cannot feel them, you don’t know when they get infected or cut or burned. After time, you lose your fingers and toes and hands because the nerves have died.

Leprosy means you cannot feel.

So for Jesus to reach out and touch you, heal you from leprosy, would mean you would be able to feel again.

And in the instant feeling was restored, your fingers suddenly grew back, or the nerves reconnected in the palms of your hands… you would be touching Jesus.

The Lord of Lords would be holding your hand.

My mind dwelled on this and my heart ached. Just like it did when I read Revelation. Just like it did when I watched Evan Almighty and “God” and Evan dance together under the tree. Just like it did when my friend said she just wanted God to come and pick her up and hold her in his arms.

I just want to be touched by Jesus. To walk through a garden and be skeptical of the gardener – because I know my Christ well enough to recognize him when I see him.

It is Easter Sunday. Today, we are celebrating.

We are celebrating the power of Christ. We celebrate that he paid a price we could not pay, but did not remain the tomb. We celebrate a Jesus who touches us, who laughs with us. Who will hide us in the rock and destroy what has hurt us, who will reach out and hold you in your all of brokenness and pull you out of all of your filth.

We celebrate Easter because He is alive.

I pray you feel Him touching your face today - that your heart feels His presence in a way, which reminds you He is real and of His real love for you.

His undeserved, unrelenting, unexpected love.