Craig D. Lounsbrough

We need to know that our limits do not define our limitations. And an empty tomb does exactly that.

Do I dare believe such an absurdly outrageous story that a man would die, lay lifeless in some tomb for three days and then somehow live again? Yet, if I dare to consider it, is that not exactly what I so desperately desire for this lifeless life of mine? And is Easter God__ tenderly outrageous way of telling me that that is exactly what I can have?

Of course God does outrageous things. But in reality, what insanity would prompt me to follow a God who did anything less?

Reasonably speaking, we can see the cross as entirely possible. But in considering Easter, we see an empty tomb as entirely impossible. And is it possible that God had to do the impossible to finally get our attention?

Of course I fall. Yet, I incessantly blame my falls on circumstance so that I can deny my own inadequacy and therefore remain my own god. And so, I am left to ask which will come first, the fall that kills me or the surrender that saves me?

A god of the __ossible_ is no God.

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life.

There are an incalculable number of things within me that I frantically wish to be emptied of, and despite my most earnest efforts to remove them, they remain. And it is Easter that reminds me that God empties out tombs.

Although I rail against it, death is the dark demarcation beyond which I am at the mercy of my own end. To the contrary, an empty tomb says that my end is at the mercy of God__ beginning.

Easter is the final solution to the finality of death.

Words can be honed to crafted perfection by the finest wordsmiths. Yet, if we trust solely in the expanse of them to explain this God of ours or articulate our experience of Him, we will have brutally destroyed the very things we are attempting to explain. And if I should do that, no words can describe how badly I wish I had no words.

I pray for sufficient wisdom to understand that wisdom apart from God is the stuff of opinion tainted by the rot of bias. And if I am somehow apt to confuse such rubbish with wisdom, I will think myself wise but find myself living in a landfill.

If my decisions constantly heed the voice of the world, I can be completely assured that I__ going to end up in a __orld of hurt._ If my decisions heed the word of God, I can be completely assured that this __orld of hurt_ won't be anywhere near my solar system.

God emptied out that first tomb so that He could turn around and empty out me.

My limitations abruptly define the frighteningly negligible extent of my existence, yet my soul utterly perishes if bound by those very same limits. And does this not somehow evidence both the reality of and need for God?

Despite my best effort to make myself as large as absolutely possible, life will always be larger than me. That simple fact makes God not only a likelihood, but a necessity.

If God has the answer to every question, maybe my appreciation for God should be shaped more by the number of questions and less by the wisdom of the answers.

God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives __eclining_.