Hot Pursuit

Christ has risen!
Christians across the world celebrated Holy Week and Easter to mark the most significant event in human history—the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
My parents always instilled in me the importance of Easter going back to my childhood days of getting up in the wee hours of the morning to attend sunrise services at 5 a.m. at our country church. 
As I sat down to ponder the morbid, yet awesomeness happenings of Easter this past weekend, I couldn’t help but wonder if the real story of the holiday has been lost over the years. I often worry about what we are really passing on to our children, grandchildren and others. 
In a survey done a few years back fewer than half of Americans mentioned Jesus’ death and resurrection when asked about the significance of Easter. At the same time, we spend more than $13 billion on the holiday for food, clothes, candy and greeting cards. 
Chocolate eggs, bunnies, egg hunts and mountains of jellybeans fill the shops and stores and our own lives. Hollywood blockbusters fill TV schedules. Many people use it as a spring getaway. At times, it looks and feels like we focus on the materialism associated with the holiday instead of the painstaking reality Jesus faced at the cross. 
As with Christmas, the true meaning of Easter seems to be getting lost on a largely secular society. 
I know some people who simply look at Easter as just another Sunday of the year. And one where they don’t attend church just like most other times of the year. There is no specialness of the holiday in their eyes. 
But there are many that mark this special time in unique ways. That’s evident at area churches like Trinity Lutheran in Owatonna. Each year they have a special children’s service on Good Friday. Children wave palm branches proudly as church members of all ages act out nine scenes of the life and death of Jesus. 
It has been said, and I would agree, that Easter is more important than Christmas. 
Easter gives us a chance to meditate on this astounding symbol of God’s forgiveness and bigheartedness while pursuing a way to practically model those traits in our own lives. Easter reminds us of God’s call for us to live a more godly, morally-based and grace-filled life. It also reminds us to live as a human being — the way Jesus prescribed.
Lives can be changed through the real meaning of Easter, but not the secular things we often get sidetracked with. 
It’s my hope that the meaning of Easter will be that of honoring and recognizing Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead, and his glorious promises of eternal life for all who believe in him. This is definitely something worth going in hot pursuit of filling our lives with.