Easter... hype vs. real

With the recent celebration of Easter, I was contemplating different Easter memories that I have.

When I was little I would wake up and search the house for my pink Easter basket filled with small gifts. Then I would put on a fancy new dress, and head to church with my family. Some years we would go really early to the sunrise service, and occasionally i would even have to dance with a ribbon or something like that. It was always a big day for singing in the choir. After church we would head home, i suppose eat lunch (although i have no memory of that), and then my sister and I would hunt for eggs that the Easter bunny (aka Dad) had hidden around the yard.

Around middle school, I started making my own choices of what I wore, and dresses were not on the list. So I stopped getting something new to wear for Easter. I started feeling too old to hunt for Easter eggs. However my older sister still wanted to, so I started helping my dad hide the eggs for her to find. Everything at church on Easter Sunday seemed so routine. Like we were just celebrating because it was a day on the liturgical calendar of the church year that told us to celebrate. There was nothing personal about it. A lot of hype.

More time passed. I went away to college. I started singing in the choir at the church I went to. We prepared an Easter cantata. While on the surface not too unlike things I had done before, but the attitude was different. Everyone was celebrating something personal for them. I started crying during one of the songs and the lady next to me leaned over and said, "i know it's hard to be away from home over a holiday". I looked back at her and replied, "that's not it at all. For the first time in my life i feel like I'm actually celebrating Easter rather than checking off a requirement of the calendar."

Skip forward a few more years to my time overseas. Again, I started singing in a choir. We started to prepare for an Easter concert. At one rehearsal, someone followed me from the street into the building and started asking questions about why I was there. What an open door to be able to share the message of the Easter story. There was so much joy and power in that concert. And as I sang a whole concert in a language I didn't understand, I came to a deeper understanding of the fact that the message of Easter crosses language and cultural barriers. He is so much bigger.

I'm so thankful for His victory over the grave. That, it's not about a certain Sunday that happens every year, but about God's love and power and how He is active in the world and wanting a relationship with me.