April 7 - Still Alive!

Two millennia ago, Jesus’ followers were alive with joy and resurrection truth. When they awoke, the day after His resurrection, He was still alive and they were still in possession of this reality: He had died their death. When they awoke the second day, He was still among them, and the third day and the day after that. They had watched Him die; now, they were watching Him live.

They were going to live forever. They knew that now. Only to think! – He was walking among them on the earth. Death could not and did not hold Him! They knew that they would walk with Him in His heavenly kingdom.

He had born their sins. All the centuries of law and sacrifice were summed up in Him. He had kept the Father’s law of love and faith and justice. The Father's justice had been carried out against satan, sin, and death. Within the law of God, there was and always had been an atonement provision, a propitiation clause. One, being without sin, died for all.

Now many, having been justified by faith, may die daily, and all those around them may watch them live, alive from the dead. When someone strikes them on the cheek, they offer the other, not in cringing, fawning subservience, but in the power of faith and hope, and in the mighty strength of redeeming love.

When someone strips them of their robes, when the hardships of life and the plots of evil doers would rob them of the dignity and even the majesty that attends those alive from the dead, they peel the shirts off their backs in order to cover their malefactors.

Those with eyes to see will watch them die, and yet they live! They live as unto God, and God lives in them. They do shine like stars, just as Daniel said they would, and each of those stars is a sun in someone’s galaxy.

Today in Cor Unum, let us take a look around and see where the light of the love of God in our hearts may be holding back the darkness for others, and let us rise up to shine that they may rise up to faith in the Resurrection of our Lord.


"Starry Night"
drawing by Ashley