There are many reasons why we celebrate Easter, but most of us would admit to welcoming new life, light and vibrant colour that bursts into our world during the Easter Season. It’s plain to see that it happens in our physical world, but if there is a spiritual dimension as well, does it mirror our physical world and how does it affect our lives?
How Celebrating Easter Can Affect Our Lives
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Christine_Hulme]Christine Hulme
The Easter season is a wonderful and at the same time a strange time of the year. Wonderful because it signifies the end of the cold, dark Winter and the beginning of light and life, with all the amazing colours that blossom in nature. In our physical world we all recognise that we need and even crave this light and life and are only too happy to celebrate by eating chocolate and other goodies and enjoying time off work to relax in the newly budding world around us.
It’s also a strange time, as it’s one of those few times of the year when many of us try to grasp the Easter meaning and indeed the meaning of life. Many of us know all about the chocolate eggs and bunnies, but do we know the Easter facts pertaining to Good Friday and Easter Sunday? How do we answer our children’s questions about Easter? For many of us, we don’t want to go there, because it depresses us to think about death and crucifixion. It’s something we don’t like to think or talk about in our western world, where modern science and medicine can ward off the inevitable for some time and help us to avoid pain. Yet it is the things in life that require pain and sacrifice that often bring the greatest rewards. The “risk takers” will have many stories to tell of coming out of their “comfort zones” and learning to “walk on water” and yet reaping huge rewards. This requires faith and trust. If you believe that God created you and the world then you have Him as the greater being in whom you can trust when you are required to “walk on water”, knowing that as the creator, he knows the way.
There are many Easter verses in the Bible that retell the story, but one speaks of how one person having gone through death for us, can give us life: “Just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life” (Romans 6v4). Some would admit that during the Easter Season they feel a sense of death. If you take hold of this, you can use this time to let go of the death in your life, for which Christ died. It requires cognitive repentance as a recognition of the separation that it has caused between you and God, the giver of life. But then you don’t stay there, you need to move on into accepting the new life that replaces the death as you are no longer separated, but rather joined to God. He desires you, just as you crave light and life, but is only waiting for you to make the next move! Even though he is the God of all power, he never forces himself on us, but wants us to desire this relationship with him that will be a continual source of peace and life, if we will let it.
Why we celebrate Easter is a question that each of us needs to answer for ourselves, but next time you bite into an Easter egg, spare a thought for the Easter facts that history records as a testimony to us now- that we don’t need to remain in death and pain, there is a way to find freedom and life.
Christine Hulme has been married for 28 years and has four children. For the past 10 years she has been involved in a therapeutic community, committed to helping people mend their lives, leading to restored relationships. http://www.squidoo.com/celebrate-easter
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-Celebrating-Easter-Can-Affect-Our-Lives&id=2089037] How Celebrating Easter Can Affect Our Lives
