Easter: Endings and Beginnings

​"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."
  ROMANS 6:3-4

Here we are finishing our journey to the cross as approach Holy Week and all the activities that occurs through it.  Are you looking at this time of Lent like a time to be "gotten through" as quickly as possible as we move toward Easter?  Sorry to say but, Easter can become the end of a journey or ordeal we suffer through.

Perhaps we should take a different approach and treat Easter as both an ending and a beginning, a midpoint around which we truly shape our Christian lives.  What if we begin to look at Lent as the ending of one life and the time immediately following Easter as the beginning of a new life?
Winter, if that’s what we call this time in Arizona, seems to sharpen our senses in anticipation of spring.  So, too, Lent may sharpen our spiritual senses to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the resurrection and the new life that begins at Easter.

Even though our season of Lent is coming to an end, why not change gears just a little and base our focus or vision on a centuries-old tradition of the church which sees Lent as a special time of intensive spiritual preparation that climaxes a longer period of preparation (some say three years) for baptism.  In this tradition, baptism occurs at Easter, marking the formal end of a non-Christian life, even as it marks the beginning of a new life centered in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Easter can then, serve as the "hinge" on which our Christian lives turn.  It is both the end and the beginning, our death and our anticipated resurrection.  In the above scripture, we read where the apostle Paul speaks to this idea, focus or vision.

As we continue through Lent and our series on “Journey to the Cross,” focus on those endings and beginnings.  Hopefully your spiritual senses will be sharpened in readiness for new life as you journey toward both Easter and toward Pentecost.

Patiently living with through endings and beginnings,
​Pastor Deborah