What Does it Mean to Me?

Do a Google image search for the word “Easter”, and this is the type of image you get … pages and pages of eggs, cute bunnies, and fuzzy little chicks.  Yes, there are a couple of crosses thrown in, but mostly cute and fuzzy ones … something pleasing to the eyes.


It took me a while to find this one.  I wanted a picture that depicted the pain and agony that Jesus felt on that day.  Most of the images I found were nice pictures of pretty crosses, some with bows on them, others with a happy looking Jesus sort of miraculously attached … no nails, no blood, no pain.

What does Easter mean to me?  Really, throughout the years, in my growth as a Christian, and my development as an Un-Fundamentalist Christian, my views have not changed as far as Easter is concerned.

We celebrate it on Good Friday, but some historians say it was not a Friday.  To me, it doesn’t matter … He died.  Jesus was called to Earth to live a pure life, and to die in our place.  His death is symbolic of the sacrifice that the Jews had to make every year in order to atone for their sins.  Hundreds of years before the death of Christ, The Prophets foretold the story of the Messiah; how He would come save the lost, to die a painful and agonizing death, taking on our sins, past present and future, so that we could have eternal life.


But Jesus didn’t just die.  Good Friday is the symbolic homage we pay for His dying, but Easter is a celebration of life!  Unlike many Prophets and Messiahs throughout history, our Messiah didn’t just die … He came back to life, fulfilling earlier prophecies, and completing the promise of salvation.

So, what does Easter mean to me?  Well, it means getting together with family to remember the gift that God gave us, to pay homage to the sacrifice that Jesus made in our place, and to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the true Messiah.