April 8 we celebrated the high holy day of Easter. The time when we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, this day's significance to the Christian faith is overshadowed by the commercialism we've come to know in painting eggs, giving all glory laud and honor to The Easter Bunny, and decorating baskets with green Easter grass. The scene is quite pretty and safe. And that's what the resurrection is not. It is not safe. When we talk about the resurrection, we are saying that God took an unjustly condemned man named Jesus who was killed for being merciful, good, and compassionate and brought him back to life. Often we equate familiarity with safety and so if I saw a once dead man walking around again I would say that that is an extraordinarily unfamiliar experience and, therefore, not safe- even dangerous. I am used to dead people staying dead. But God raises this Jesus and if God will do that to a dead man, then it becomes even scarier to think about what God will do with my life. The idea of God raising Jesus from the dead got me thinking: I know for certain that when God raised Jesus from the dead, it was God's way of thumbing His nose at the world. By its nature the world deals in the ways of death and it is most sobering to figure out that when we believe we are alive, we are actually dead. When we are busy hunting for approval from our friends, wallowing in our greed to fill God's vacancy in our hearts, and saturating our souls with temporary pleasures, we are indulging the ways of the world. And Jesus' own words illustrate that these death-filled cream puff pursuits can never undo the life we find in Jesus Christ: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their lfie for my sake will save it." Gain through loss. Hmmmm....