What if we marked time not just with the birth of Christ, but with his resurrection, as well? What if every Easter was marked by fireworks and celebration and fancy parties? What if, on the first of each year, we toasted our fresh start in Jesus, not just the turning of a calendar page? Imagine if, on Easter, we truly rejoiced with exceeding great joy?

Over the last week, I’ve posted a couple of things about Good Friday, but I’ve been having a really hard time writing about Easter and I’m still figuring out why. I’ve spent time reading the Passion narratives as well as the stories of Jesus’ birth, along with all three of John’s epistles. I don’t have trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of my sins being forgiven by the Lord’s death on the cross. I spent ten weeks studying Hebrews with my Bible study group last year and learned a lot about the Jewish sacrificial system and its fulfillment in Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Sin brings death and redeeming one from death requires payment in life. I think my problem in moving on from that to processing the resurrection is that I am still trying to understand. I am the type of person that wants all of the pieces of all of everything to fit together in my brain. But, as I’m sure you know better than I, God does not fit in a box. Celebrating Easter, I am learning, requires more than just reading and scratching down notes.

My heart and my mind tend to have trouble working together when it comes to emotions and ever since I gave my life to the Lord, this has become more and more frustrating. How do I merge my thirst for the “book knowledge” I find in the Bible with the indefinable, illogical way my heart experiences God? How do I join the events of that first Easter Sunday with the unintelligible cries of my heart at the knowledge that my God lives? Peter (of course Peter) has given me hope that I am not alone and that the wildness in my heart is good. In his first epistle, verses 1:3 and 8, he describes the joy we feel in obtaining “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” as “inexpressible and filled with glory.” Inexpressible. What a wave of relief reading this word brought to me. With the Holy Spirit living within me, how indeed could I express in words all that it stirs within me?

I’ve asked a lot of questions here and my answer, mainly to myself, is this: just let go. I give permission to my inexpressible emotions to run free (for me, easier said than done). I will label them “joy” and then celebrate the day that death lost its sting. Hallelujah and praise the Lord! So what if I can’t draw a straight line between words on a page and the tears that well so unexpectedly. It doesn’t matter. Christ lives and through him so do I. He promised me that one day I will understand and that ought to be enough for me. After all, if I could comprehend every facet of God’s mind and plan, he would be a god far too small to worship in the first place. My God is too big to fit in a box.

And now it’s Easter, everyone! The ball is dropping, the music is soaring, and the party is starting. Let your heart loose and celebrate that we have a perfect, loving Savior, risen and seated at the right hand of the Father God. We live because he lives to intercede for us. We live because he deigned to love us. Put on your party clothes and celebrate our New Year!