From your local slacker blogger for the week (you guys think I’m not as flaky as I claim to be … but I am…. my week really got away from me) a message on Easter – from a special place.

A couple months ago, an incredibly talented friend asked me and several, much more gifted than I, writers to participate in a new project she had been planning. She has started a super cool grouping of products called It’s Treedition. With it, she has come up with a beautiful tree (that can be displayed in your home) on which families can celebrate holidays by building traditions. I love what she’s doing because it adds tools to our effort to steer our kids away from relying on societal sources to define their self esteem, but to looking to family to know they belong. Genuine, independence/confidence-infusing responsibilities sure go a long way to help them know. But so do family traditions.

So… for the Easter Treedition, she has a cute tree decorated with eggs that point back to an accompanying devotion. I thought I’d share with you the piece she so sweetly let me contribute. It just so happens, I got to write about the most amazing aspect of the Easter holiday – The Resurrection. I hope you enjoy. For friends from different faith background, thanks for letting me share.

Historians say that the stone covering Christ’s tomb most likely weighed over 2 tons – roughly the size of a car. Do you think you could pick up and move a car? Not likely. And for people to have rolled the stone from the entrance (something naysayers tried to claim), not only would someone need to move it from a groove that held it in place, but he would also need to push it uphill. All of which was mean to keep the stone in place. Moving the stone would have required the strength of several men, pushing and pulling together. Not only that, but any potential stone mover would need to do it silently so as to not alert Roman guards stationed around the tomb.

Impossible.

Yet completely consistent with God and the way he works, the stone was moved. Because God is in the business of impossible. He himself tells us in Isaiah 55, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways.” His ways are far above and over the ways of the world. And He always does what He says He is going to do.  He is Truth. He is victorious.

Rising early “on the first day of the week” to bring spices for Jesus’ body, two women came upon men in gleaming clothes at the tomb. They saw an opening where the stone had been rolled away. And they were told, “He is not here; he has risen!” Then the key, “Remember how he told you…”

Because Jesus had told them. On many occasions. In Mark 8:31 he taught “them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.” Why? Because he loves us. Because thousands of years earlier, He had set into motion his plan of redemption.

So just as he said, three days after his death (the women set out on the “first day of the week”), the tomb guarded by an unmovable stone gave witness to the impossible. An empty space. Formerly occupied by a beaten and dead man who had told his disciples that not only would he mercilessly be killed, but that he would live. To never die again.

Impossible.

But everything he says is true. Everything. That rolled stone is proof. Inasmuch as God did what he said by delivering his Son to death and to being raised to life for our redemption, God always tells the truth and follows through.

When He tells us, don’t be afraid; I am with you always; I am your Rock; I am your Redeemer. He’s telling the truth. He knows every thought we think. He sees every step we take. He enjoys every laugh. Catches every tear. Walks every road with and for us.

So, let’s remember the stone – the impossible – when challenges, hardships, good times, and bad times come our way. As we do, let’s realize – that with God for us, “who can be against us.” And, let’s always try to do what the disciples did… “remember how he told” us.

Thanks for walking the road with me.
-Kay