This Easter season was a little strange for me.
If you followed my blog around this time last year, then you know that, historically, my church has always done a very large Easter production. With the exception of my years in college, I've been involved in these productions in some way every single year since 2001. I wrote a lot about last year's experience on the blog in the weeks and months leading up to Easter (read about it here, here, here, and here).
For a variety of different reasons, after the pageant last year, the Music & Worship team decided to change our pageant schedule so that on even years (2012, 2014, 2016, etc.) we do the pageant, and on odd years (2013, 2015, 2017, etc.) we do more missions and outreach based programs.
Seeing as it is 2013, we didn't have a pageant this year.
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The Wednesday before Palm Sunday it suddenly hit me that Easter season was upon us and in less than a week, we would be celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. It hadn't even occurred to me that Easter was so close because for more than 10 years, my preparation for Easter has been filled with a flurry of rehearsals, costume fittings, line memorizing, and makeup application.
With those things absent from life this year, I didn't have the same awareness for the arrival of Easter as I've had for more than a decade. It felt strange. It didn't feel like it should be Easter already. And as I sit here, on Easter Monday, it still doesn't really feel like Easter happened. At least not in the same way that it has in years past.
I'm in a very different place than I was last year. I'm in a different place than I was the year before or the year before that and I will be in a different place next year, but I feel like I'd missed something.
When Easter Sunday came around, I didn't feel prepared. I didn't feel like my heart was ready to truly appreciate and reflect upon the magnitude of the events of Good Friday through Easter Sunday from over 2000 years ago.
My church had a Good Friday service on Friday night, which I attended with my family. At the end of the service, we took communion. As I held the elements in my hand, waiting for them to be passed to rest of the congregation, all I could think was how unprepared I felt, how unworthy I felt to have received such an amazing and incredible gift.
And then Easter Sunday came and went. The morning was a flurry of activity between going to the main service, helping in the nursery, and singing in the young adult service. Suddenly, the celebration of Easter at church was done and I was heading off to my parents for lunch and some relaxing time. And a few hours later, there I was, preparing to go to bed, feeling very much the same as I had when I'd woken up that morning.
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In the last week leading up to Easter, I spent a lot of time thinking about how unprepared I felt. I was distracted by obligations at work, church, and the flurry of activity on social media regarding the Prop 8 and DOMA hearings last week and the resulting renewal of marriage equality debates. So many things were begging for my attention during the week leading up to the annual remembrance of the day that quite literally changed the course of history forever.
There was a lot of anger, resentment, and hate on Twitter, Facebook, news sites and blogs last week. People were arguing about tolerance or the lack thereof, proclaiming that everyone needs to stop fighting and get on the "right side of history." This isn't a post about marriage equality, homosexuality, gay rights, or anything like that, but it is important to recognize that the events of last week had a fairly significant effect on my thoughts and mental process leading up to Easter Sunday.
By the time I got to Friday night, my heart was tired and burdened.
Rather than spending the week preparing my heart, reflecting on the greatest gift ever given, I'd allowed myself to be distracted by things so much less important than the gift of salvation. I'd allowed myself to sit and seethe on one side of the computer, reading post after post that frustrated me, from Christians and non-Christians alike. I'd allowed the actions of the things created to overshadow the magnitude of the actions of the Creator.
I'm not saying it isn't important to talk about the things that have been discussed this week. I'm not saying it's not important to discuss issues of doctrine, social justice, and the like. But it is important for us to never allow our focus on any kind of doctrinal issues to block our view of the cross.
I didn't quite feel prepared for Easter this year, but on this Easter Monday, I was reminded that those who witnessed the first Easter weren't either. They weren't prepared for what happened in those few days. They weren't prepared for what happened on that unforgettable Sunday morning. They weren't prepared for how what happened that weekend would change the course of history forever.
It wasn't their preparedness for the events to come that was important. It was their response after the fact.
It is a good and beautiful thing to take the time leading up to Easter to reflect on the glory of the cross, the sacrifice of our Savior, the love that died for us. But none of that preparedness for one day each years makes the tiniest bit of difference if it doesn't effect how we live our lives the rest of the year. It doesn't matter how "prepared" our heart is on Easter Sunday morning if, the next day, we continue living as if Christ hadn't died.
Distractions come, distractions go, but regardless of the day of the year, the time of the year, and whether or not I've had a pageant season to prepare myself, my heart should continually, daily be focused on the glory and the splendor of the cross.
The grave is empty. Death has been defeated. He is risen.
He is risen, indeed.
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