Blessed Easter - the God event

Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ has risen.

How greatly do we all need an Easter blessing from our God and Father in the Easter Christ.

May God’s Easter blessing rest upon you and your loved ones during these anxious days. God bless you all.

Today is Easter Saturday, the day between the two eternal days of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Saturday ,for Jesus’people, was the seventh day, the day of rest.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus removed Jesus’body and laid it in the tomb (John 19.38-39).

They had to act quickly before 6pm on the Friday evening, when the Sabbath, the seventh day, began.

The Jewish day started at 6pm on the previous day and lasted till 6pm on the actual day.

So the Saturday of Holy Week started at 6pm on Good Friday and lasted till 6pm on the actual

Saturday.

‘Jesus died for our sins once for all. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit’ (1 Peter 3.18-22).

That Saturday after Good Friday was the Jewish day of rest.

What was‘rest’for the ’Lamb of God who had taken away the sins of the world?’(John 1.29)

That Saturday, Sabbath, was also the first day of Passover, when the people remembered how the angel of the Lord saw the blood of the slain lambs and ‘passed over’the houses of Israel and set them free (Exodus 12.13).

The Sabbath rest features in creation,‘The Lord rested on the seventh day of creation’(Genesis 2.2).

Gentle God, in that Cross you made of us a new creation, in Christ the new Adam (1 Corinthians 15.45).

Then gentle God what was your day of rest between the Cross and EmptiedTomb?

Was it the rest of sorrow and the repose of sacrifice? The Sabbath was an holy day (Exodus 20.8).

How did your holiness preside over these hours between Cross and Emptied Tomb?

Gentle God, you made your holiness into saving grace.

Holy, holy, holy, Gentle God of the Cross. Heaven and earth are full of your mercy. Glory be to God brought low.

On Easter Saturday, let us cherish Good Friday’s Cross and await Easter Sunday’s Emptied Tomb.

These two Easter days were designed in the eternal will and purpose of God. They were forged in the white-hot purity of God’s grace and favour.

They were brought to fruition in the life and passion, death and rising of that unique figure we honour as Jesus the Christ.

We will only begin to understand Easter when we realise that Easter is the eternal God-event within the human race.

The human family desperately needs Easter.

Our global civilisation is so fragile.

Our local communities are burdened with too many families struggling with poverty.

We need reminding of the invaluable worth of every man, woman and child.

Easter shows us that God is in our midst to support and strengthen.

Easter confirms our faith and strengthens our witness.

May God’s Sabbath rest settle upon every soul.

Our Father God saw the distress of his Calvary Son and heard the Son’s anguished cries.

So let us pray to God for the distressed peoples of every nation.

Our Father God raised the Easter Jesus from the dead.

So let us pray to God for the strengthening for us all.

Then the blessing of the Easter Jesus will be for the healing of the nations.

As the Calvary Son of God remembered his family home, ‘Son behold thy mother (John 19.26-27)’.

So let us pray to God for homes and families in their anxieties over illnesses or their distress under the burden of poverty.

Let us pray for God’s rest, the Easter rest twixt Calvary and the EmptiedTomb.

Rest for the body, serenity for the mind, and blessings for the soul.

‘This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice in it and be glad’.

These are the Lord’s doing they are wondrous in our eyes (Psalm 118.23-24).

A little prayer – gentle Father God, to our God belongs all praise and honour.

Thanks be to God for the wonder of Easter, the miracle of salvation, the gladness of Jesus in our heart and soul.

In Jesus’name, Amen.