51 MORE TO GO

This past Sunday we celebrated that Jesus is alive.

Easter.

For a follower of Jesus, this is the best day of all – even over Christmas.

In fact, the early Christians didn’t celebrate the birth of Jesus. They were to preoccupied with the death and resurrection of the Messiah. It wasn’t until hundreds of years later that the Church decided to emphasis Jesus’ birth and that was in concert with wanting to influence a culture that worshiped the sun not The Son.

Anyway…

Yesterday, I got to reflecting with a few friends about Easter and why it doesn’t seem to pack the same cultural “punch” as the Christmas festivities. I heard from my friends that it may be because it requires first a walk through sin, death, and helplessness before one can experience the celebration of Life.

One can see why that might be a downer. The really good parties don’t usually start out this way.

But that is exactly how it is with Easter. One cannot jump for joy on Easter until one sits in the ashes of Good Friday. Easter without Good Friday is like a fish without water – just fits of flopping around, slowing loosing life.

Maybe that is why followers of Jesus choose to gather on Sundays not the traditional Sabbath Saturdays.

To remember.

To remind each other that we are people of Easter – people of Life. Although we recognize sin and death is in and around us all the time, Sunday’s do not belong to these things because, by faith, we believe Jesus is alive and has conquered sin and death.

That makes all the difference!

Every Sunday should be a party for followers of Jesus! On Sundays we should let go of yesterday, push away the worries of tomorrow, and

celebrate,

sing,

laugh,

love,

learn,

rest,

enjoy,

breath.

Thank GOD we have 51 more parties to go.

(and then we get to start all over again)

RESONATORS

Someone once said that, “whenever you write a book, you need someone to say yes to it.” Although not many of us aspire to write books, we are all telling a story. Living out life as a sort of book that unfolds little by little, chapter by chapter and we all need someone to say “yes” to it.

Recently, I came across a book that opened my eyes to the importance of having others in our life who say “yes”. The book is titled, The Company They Keep. It chronicles the life of a small community of authors who shared their literary world with one another. This group of authors called themselves The Inklings. Two active members of this group were J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Perhaps you have heard of them. The Company They Keep goes on to reveal how much of the work of these authors were developed in community – a group of friends that resonated with one another in order to produce books like The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, to name just two.

I learned from The Company They Keep that “the term ‘resonator’ refers to anyone who acts as a friendly, interested, supportive audience. Resonators fulfill many roles: they show interest, give feedback, express praise, offer encouragement, contribute practical help, and promote the work to others. The presence of resonators is believed to be one of the most important factors that differentiate the successful writer from the unsuccessful. Without resonators, writers are very likely to succumb to the ‘dampening influence of their environment”

Our life stories are only as good as we live in active resonating communities. Anything less will very likely cause us to succumb to the “dampening influence of our environment”.

Can you name the resonators in your life? Just as importantly, can you name the people you resonate?