Easter Sunday is an incredible day. We have by far, more people in attendance for worship on that day than any other day of the year. So much effort is put into this big day. The praise team practices a little more. We organize a choir. One thing I heard often echoed was “what a great worship experience!” Everyone dresses up a little bit more. Barbara dressed me in a tie! We wake up a little earlier in the morning. We do special things with our children to teach them about Jesus’ resurrection. Using the sports cliche – on Easter Sunday we give 110%. I log onto Facebook and everyone is sharing their faith about how Jesus is risen and how great is our God.
The question that comes to my mind, as I face a “Holy Hangover” on Monday morning, “why don’t we do this every Sunday? What is it that is holding us back from giving Jesus everything each week? Why don’t we have Easter every Sunday? Easter Sunday may be over, but Jesus is still risen from the dead! What’s our excuse?”
There are a few logical explanations. The most obvious is that we would likely burn out. To make Easter as special as we make it, we will typically set aside a few things that we might otherwise participate in. We spent the last few weeks in a sprint and anyone who is a long distance runner knows you cannot sprint the entire race.
Nevertheless, I wonder if we don’t have some more to give when it comes to our worship the other 51 Sundays of the year. We just finished the season of Lent. Many of us might have given up something for Lent. I wonder if there are some things we could give up not just for this holy season, but on a more permanent basis to allow us to give more for Jesus.
Not saying, just wondering!
Of course we must keep in mind that the measure of our success as a church is not measured by what takes places inside the walls of the church building on Sunday morning. Our success is not measured by how many people walked through the doors this past weekend or any weekend for that matter. The success is measured by what happens outside the walls of the church the remainder of the week. Are lives being transformed? Is our community being impacted? Are people being brought into a saving relationship with Jesus as Savior? Is the Kingdom of God being expanded? We could have an incredible Easter celebration every week, but if none of these things are happening, what is it all for?
So Happy Easter everyone! Hope you had a great celebration yesterday wherever you may have been.
