Now what?

By Pastor Kevin Barnhart

Spring Grove Evangelical Free

Moment follows moment, day follows day, as you get older, they can start to fly by so quickly you can barely keep track.  Events and time move quicker than we can process all that is happening, so we don’t process.  We keep our head down, reduce our focus to things that impact us directly and yet more and more of life goes by unnoticed.  So Holy Week has come and gone. Maybe that is a big deal and maybe it’s isn’t to you.  Maybe it’s a time of deep and desperate longing for life, or maybe it’s a time with family and another reason to have too much sugar.

Yet this question – what’s next looms large.  This question was one that the very first followers of Jesus were asking on that first Easter. You hear it in the voices of the two disciples walking home, saying to Jesus ironically enough, “we had hoped.” So, what came next? The holiday was over so it’s time to go home.  It’s time to go back to work.  Back to an ordinary life of distraction. Then they encountered a risen Jesus, and their hearts burn within them.  Their hearts burned not from eating too much, but a passion fueled by hope, and purpose.  They had to go back, and share this good news with others.  It would be criminal to keep trudging on with business as usual after they had seen him, seen Jesus.  So they went back and shared with others and found Him once again.

We are left with a lot of the same realities and choices.  Now what?  For many, Holy Week is remembering what Jesus did, how he suffered and died for you, and was raised again promising resurrection life for all those who place their faith in Him, is the biggest deal possible.  For others it’s a chance to check in with God, a head nod to a forgotten faith.  For others it’s not even that, Easter is just another day.  After which you go home, and go back to a frantic life with overwhelming realties, and head down trudging.

What if it was more than just another day?  What if this day could change all your other days?  Easter comes and Easter goes, but what if God’s love could change things for you?

How long has it been since your heart burned, with a consuming passion that compelled you to get up and go?  When we look around our world we see a lot of apathy, a lot of inertia, or if there is passion its misguided and misdirected doing more harm than good.  What if there could be life after Easter, the kind of life that Jesus came here to give us.  Not just eternal life there and then but also here and now.  What if there was purpose and passion that could break free of the crushing gravity of just existing? Jesus came to answer that question.

So that ball is in your court.  Now what?