The march of time – and its promise

(Credit to Gail Mount and Diane Traynor for the beautiful display created in above picture.)

So Easter (Resurrection Day) service has come and gone for another year.  How does this remembrance impact the other 364 days of the year for you?  When I was younger, each flip of the calendar was a march towards another achievement or freedom – driver’s license, graduation, marriage, children.  As the years have passed and these things are now in the rearview mirror, each calendar flip is an acknowledgement of the march of time, the establishment of legacy, and the decline that comes with aging. 

The celebration of resurrection is the clarion call of hope for me. As 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:11 reminds us, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

“So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.” 

This life I am living, I am living for the glory of God.  When this life is over, God has a body that is far better than this, one for it will be without the stain or degradation of sin and all its consequences.  And on top of that, I will dwell in the Presence of the Lord forever.  This is the hope that Christ Jesus purchased for me on Calvary’s cross and God proved was acceptable by raising Jesus from the dead.  The impact for me? I wake every day, both Resurrection Sunday and the other 364 confidently knowing God will use me now and one day raise me up to be with Him.

Pressing on…

Ron Tipton, Senior Pastor