New Again

Dear Eugene,

I wonder when people first saw Jesus' resurrected body in the flesh, what kind of new possibility did they see in...this?

I am not just talking about the emotion they had had, as unbearably, earth-shakingly fierce as it must have been.  A hundred questions must have also violently bounced around in the little confine of their intellect, crashing into each others' course, breaking out new paths and energy hitherto seemed impossible, even nonexistent.

A person's entire being must have felt like about to burst open, not able to contain this "new thing" the Father is doing--in his world, right here and now, through his Son.  The disciple looked around and there was the same chair on the ground and the same blue sky up above, but nothing is as it was before.  Everything has changed.  And the new possibilities!!!  Imagine the new possibilities!!!

Like, if today all of a sudden wings are growing out of my back and before I was done thinking the feathers might just be for decorative purpose the half-voluntary flutters were taken over by a confident, conscious, and purposeful flapping, as natural as grabbing an apple with my hand...  The next thing I knew is I was in the cloud and the rest is history.  Oh, the new possibilities!!!

Or imagine receiving the news that I have just inherited 10 trillion dollars (which is not as vulgar an analogy as it seems, not for Paul anyway).  I'd feel excited, perplexed, challenged, even burdened, worried.  All I know is, doesn't matter how I feel about it, this changes everything.

If a person thinks Christ's resurrection has to do with only proving dying is not a finality or one day in the distant future I will die but made alive again, then how he lives his life in the here and now would certainly reflect his misunderstanding of Christ's mission and achievement.  Would that be the reason why for many Easter "celebration" is so devoid of emotion, meaning, and implications?  There were fanfare, well-wishing, even pyrotechnics--but the earth didn't shake, and there was no new possibilities bursting out of us.

Chesterton once observed, "What has really happened during the last seven days and nights? Seven times we have been dissolved into darkness as we shall be dissolved into dust; our very selves, so far as we know, have been wiped out of the world of living things; and seven times we have been raised alive like Lazarus, and found all our limbs and senses unaltered, with the coming of the day."

I pray that every morning I will rise up to the new possibilities, made possible only by Christ's resurrection.

Yours, Alex

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