Pineridge Blog

I want to wish you all a Happy Easter!

I really do wish you all of the happiness bunnies, egg hunts and family gatherings can provide this Easter Sunday.  I wish you happiness of celebrating and knowing the Resurrection of Jesus.  I pray that the great Good News of new life, abundant life seeps down into your soul nourishing dry places, mending broken places, bringing light into darkness and making you truly happy. 

Easter brings its own level of happiness each year, but the joy of Easter is not about hiding the ragged edges of the world and pretending everything is OK when it plainly isn’t.  Nor is Easter a magic wand that fixes, fills in and smoothes away all of the “issues” which still remain.  The real happiness of Easter is knowing that whatever we face at any moment, the final word is life not death.  Most days that is hard to even remember, much less believe.  Sometimes it is hard to reconcile the competing facts that Easter is true and life is still hard.  Maybe having faith means being able to hold both of those things at the same time in our minds and hearts.

Henry Knox Sherrill said once, “The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world.  Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice.  But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.”

Happy Easter!,

Jim