Easter morning has passed, and we are already mid-way into our usual weekly routine of work or school, grocery shopping and paying bills, wanting to get outdoors to do yard work, and opting instead to stay inside where it’s dry.  As I write, the skies are clouding up again, and storms are coming.   Has Easter come and gone?

The children and I shouted — and I do mean shouted — Christ is Risen on Sunday morning.  And an excited full-house shouted back — He is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.  But the shouting didn’t need to end on Easter — we ought to still be shouting.  Easter was not the end of the story.  Not at all.

…but from the resurrection of Christ, a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world. If only a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed.  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).     The strong winds that are blowing up a storm outside my office remind me that we who believe in the message of the empty tomb should be out there right now blowing up a storm of He Lives!  Just make sure that when you say those words, you also proclaim that because He lives — so, too, do you.  Christ is risen also means that at the same time you have risen.  That you have also received this gift from heaven.  This proclamation is about us too.

In the words of Clarence Jordan:  The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grace, but a spirit-filled fellowship.  Not a rolled away stone, but a carried-away church!

Care to be carried away with us here at Disciples Christian?  Stay tuned and prepare to be blown away as the Easter story continues this week when Jesus appears to the disciples and breathes on them the Holy Spirit.

And with that, Jesus sent those disciples out into the world.  Mid-week.  Amidst all the routine and the challenges.  And he expected those disciples to change the world by their spirit-filled presence.

He is alive.   We are alive.  We have a message to take into the world.

Pastor Kris