Resurrection…
I was never delivered from addiction, though I was delivered from meddling with drugs because of msocial conformity.
I was delivered from promiscuity caused by selfishness, insecurity and escapism.
I was delivered from what many call a “father wound” when I realized that my father was never fathered.
I carried these issues into adulthood and I thank God for his mercy that binds Him to a deliberate “forgetfulness.”
In that sense, I was raised from the dead into the life of Christ.
But as I go deeper into the life of God and over the course of many years, I’m the one who can forget. Decades deep into salvation, it is easy to forget those graves in which I resided for many years and the depths of their pain that covered me like dirt over a coffin and wouldn't allow the real me to surface.
These dusty memories need more than Lemon Pledge. God has graciously provided me with a symbol for the day-to-day plodding. When my passion gets lazy, sloppy or unthankful, I look to the east in the morning and there it is.
The sunrise is the daily reminder of every resurrection I’ve been through. Usually, I go to bed with some need of resurrection. The reason He made the sun so bright is because it is the metaphor of the brilliance of mercy. It is the startling contrast to the darkness of the myriad of coffins.
We need this resurrection on Easter for eternity, but we need our daily sunrise for today.
On Easter morning, we get both.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: The sunrise is the magnificent portal to heaven in that it helps us relive Easter morning over and over again. It’s brightness, symbolism and beauty cleanses and helps us understand why Mary wanted to cling to Jesus on Easter morn.
Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning…Because of the tender mercy of our God, With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us…In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’
Psalm 30:5 NASB, Luke 1:78,79 NASB, Luke 24:5 NIV
May every sunrise be your Easter for the day.