Normal Monday

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are behind us.  The eggs are all gone, the baskets put away and the Peeps have been gobble up along with the Cadbury Bunnies.  The rituals have been completed, the Resurrection sermons preached and the special services have come to a close.  Now its Monday after Easter and life can get back to normal.

It could and likely will for most, but should it?  I'm not suggesting that we keep up all the dressing and extras of Easter but I am questioning what is normal.  Is normal to not darken a church building doorway again until  Christmas?  Is normal not to consider the Resurrection and it's implications to our lives until next Easter?  Is normal setting aside all this religious trappings and get back to your real life, a life hammered out on the anvil of worldly enterprise instead of spiritual expectation?

What if instead, we lived in the shadow of the Resurrection?  What if the Resurrection were a weekly celebration and a daily reality?  What if the message of the empty tomb filled our empty lives?  What if we walked according to the Spirit, embraced the Presence of the Living Lord and engaged the world as victorious children of Almighty God?  What if the Resurrection set the tone for Monday?

What would normal Monday look like if each of us truly experienced a "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ?" (1 Pet 1:3).  If we were daily experiencing the presence of the Living Lord, how could any day be normal in the sense of mundane or placid.  What is normal like for one who one who daily "denie himself taking up his cross and following Jesus?" (Mk 8:34).

Easter is a once yearly celebration in ritual and tradition to memorialize an epic event - the Resurrection.  But the Resurrection is more than an event in history, it is a reality in daily life, a constant in the spiritual walk of the believer.  Because he rose from the grave, he is not there and then, he is here and now.  My Lord and yours did not leave us, indeed "he will never leave us as orphans, he will come to us" (Jn 14:18).

Yes, today is Monday, an average, normal Monday.  But what will normal be for you?  Will you walk lockstep with the crowds in worldly mediocrity and sameness or will you choose to follow the Resurrected Lord, praying and looking for divine appointments along the way as you allow the Spirit of the Living God to shine out of your life like the Risen Christ shining out of the empty tomb?  Jus' Ask'n.