Eastertide is a season of great rejoicing and thanksgiving and of abiding hope and faith in the promise of God that in Christ we, too, will share fully in this new life He has purchased for us with His suffering, death and mighty resurrection. Here, we have a "foretaste", a "pledge", an "earnest" or "down-payment" on the fullness of our inheritance in the eternal kingdom of joy, righteousness, peace and praise. An old Gospel hymn states it this way, "O, I want to see Him, look upon His face...". That will be a joy that cannot be comprehended or explained in human experience, but only hinted at in the "down-payment" of the indwelling of Christ's Holy Spirit in our hearts. Sometimes, we get a glimmer of that fullness of joy that is found only in His Presence, gazing upon His awesome beauty; that is, when we are grateful, thankful and full of loving praise and worship from our hearts and whole being to the One who has loved us and given Himself for us.
So, we are called to be an "alleluia" people, in every season of life - even in the midst of sorrow, loss and death. For our risen Lord has transformed the enemy's last weapon of death into a gateway to a glorious and unending life of fullness, wholeness, completeness and wondrous discoveries unlimited. As we learn to die daily to sin, self, satan and the world, we are already tasting the death of Christ, as well as the beginnings of His new Life of Resurrection glory in our inner being. As an alleluia people we are called to live from the inside out, for St. Paul reminded us that though our outward man (our physical nature) is wasting away day by day, our inner life is being renewed by the fountain of the abundant and unending and unbounded Life of the Risen One we have come to share in, even here, even now.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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