Resurrection Sunday...

I spent last night at the 'institution' that is the Christ Church annual Easter Saturday All Nighter with some of the amazing young people I get to do life alongside...we worshipped, we pondered, Rob (not Bell) created a Fake Nooma for us (some of you will know what I mean) based around Badgers, Mushrooms and Snakes (you kind of had to be there). We walked into town near midnight and ate kebabs and slept very little before heading off to join other Jesus Followers at Higher Drive Rec to welcome in the Sunday of Resurrection. The sunrise was astoundingly beautiful, breathtakingly awesome.  Jesus is Alive.  Grace is here.  The reconciliation of ALL THINGS is in motion. 

"The third day began with a chuckle.  The sun snickered as it climbed over the worlds edge.  The trees trembled and shook as they caught on.  A great belly-laugh thundered from the earth to the sky, booming through the heavens.  The tomb was empty; death was empty; hell was empty.  Jesus was alive, alive with a life freshly immune to death.  Every hammer blow on Golgotha had driven another nail into the coffin of the system,  By the time the Life-leeches understood, it was too late.  They themselves had planted the seed of love in the raw earth and now it had struck, never to be uprooted...

God's laughter springs from the final turning of the tables.  The worst of the world was aimed at God on that cross; evil, hatred, jealousy, fear, cruelty, revenge, death itself.  It was all swallowed up in love, as the sea absorbs a rainstorm, and changed - transformed into goodness and hope and unassailable life.  Jesus didn't just come alive again...He rose to a way of being that compares to human life as the sun to a torch."
Mike Riddell - Godzone

Jesus is Risen, He is Risen indeed.