Thanks to guest blogger David McKay for sharing the following poignant reflection on resurrection.  I hope we all have these moments where the resurrection power of Jesus Christ becomes more real and vivid to us.

When I was a young man in seminary, my wife Cindi and I, along with our then newborn son Jonathan, piled into our car every Sunday to drive two hours to a small country church on the far western edge of Illinois.  There I would participate in worship, preach a sermon, and then get back into the car for the long drive home.  Mt Pleasant Christian Church was the oldest congregation in the county and consisted of about twelve of the county’s oldest citizens.

Once a month after service the members clambered down a set of ancient, dirt encrusted steps to the church’s cobweb infested, unfinished basement.  There they sat at rickety tables to eat a potluck meal and love on our family and one another.  All the food was usually good, but the highlight was almost always Edna Mae’s perfect pecan pie.

Edna Mae came to church every Sunday along with her frail husband Albert and served as the unofficial matriarch of the congregation.  She wasn’t the boss, but everyone trusted her love for God and paid attention when she spoke.   I developed a sincere appreciation and respect for her.  Frequently, she would slip a check into my suit jacket pocket that was greatly appreciated by a cash strapped young couple with a new baby.  But the most impressive trait about her was the devoted tenderness she showed toward her husband whose health was rapidly and visibly deteriorating.

After I had been preaching at Mt Pleasant for several months I began a series of sermons through the book of Acts.  Everything went well for the first several weeks.  My sermons were good for a young preacher who knew the Word but hadn’t yet struggled much with life.  The message in each text seemed to leap off the page as I studied and prepared and listened to God speak.  But then I came to the story of the resurrection of Dorcas.  I studied that passage again and again but could not figure out how to make it relevant to my congregation.  I just didn’t know what to do with it.  I wrote and rewrote and rewrote a sermon, but it was terrible, and I knew it.  By Friday my flesh began to panic.  My prayers to God started to sound something like, “You know God, if You don’t help me soon, I’m going to look like an idiot.”   And then on Saturday afternoon I received a phone call that Edna Mae’s husband Albert had just died, and suddenly a story about the resurrection was full of more meaning and application than I could ever preach.

Now that I’m a couple of decades older it seems incredible to me that I once didn’t know how to preach about a topic as central to our walk with God as resurrection.  But I don’t think that I’m the only one.  Often I’m afraid we approach the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a nice story that we dust off at Easter and funerals.  It makes us feel better and gives us hope when someone dies, but that’s it.  We act as though it has no meaning for our everyday lives.

What a lie!  The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of our faith.  It is the proof that God’s Word is always true even when it seems impossible.  The resurrection is the guarantee that no matter how bad things get God always wins.  Jesus was in the grave for three days.  You don’t get much deader than that.  Life doesn’t get much more hopeless than when you’re lying in a tomb with a stone in front of the door.  But death didn’t stop God.  And if death can’t beat Him, then nothing we face can beat Him.

Financial problems aren’t as strong as death.  Unemployment isn’t bigger than a tomb.  Death trumps sickness, loneliness, failed marriages, addictions, or anything else.  It is the biggest enemy we face, and God has already beaten it.  So the next time you are tempted to despair or give up, remember that nothing in your life is as hopeless as death, and even death can’t beat God.  Jesus rose from the dead, and in doing so He won victory for us.  We win!