Like Him We Rise
Betsy Childs

We usually remember to consider the idea of resurrection in the springtime. People draw parallels between the new life of the budding trees and reproducing wildlife and the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. If one thinks about it, however, the recurring cycles of nature, of death and birth, are startlingly different from Christ's resurrection from the dead.

We live in a world of death. The growth of living plants depends on the decomposition of dead ones. If the Lord tarries, every one of us will die, and this truth is brought home when a person known for his or her vivacity is diagnosed with a terminal disease. On his deathbed, Matthew Henry (the well-known Bible commentator) is reported to have said, "Tomorrow I am not sure whether or not I will be in the land of the dying." (Footnote 1: qtd. By Paul Kooistra in Network Magazine, Summer 2003.) He spoke well when he called this the land of the dying, for every day leads us closer to our end. For those who die a natural death, death may come gradually. The body weakens, experiences pain, and little by little slips into death. The poet John Donne in his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions chronicled twenty-three stages of sickness preceding death. Those of us whom God blesses with long life will come upon death in stages and in due season, just as summer turns into fall.

Resurrection, on the other hand, is an abrupt and rare occurrence. It has more in common with an immediate death by a tragic accident than with the customary dying process. One moment Christ was dead; the next he lived. I love the archaic term for bringing to life: to quicken. One moment Christ was among the dead; the next he joined the quick. Songwriter Michael Card penned these lyrics: Love crucified arose/ And the grave became a place of hope/ For the heart that sin and sorrow broke/ Is beating once again. The resurrection was a case in which a heart that had not beaten for three days suddenly began pumping blood again. If Christ's death in the middle of the afternoon caused the sky to go black, what must have happened when he opened his eyes in the middle of the night?

This abrupt reversal of the natural order of things is the key to all our hopes. Our hope is not that spring will come again; spring is always followed by fall and then winter. Rather, we believe that the death-cycle will be reversed. Christ's resurrection is the precursor to the resurrection of those who believe in Him. 1 Corinthians 15:20 says, "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

"One of the best poetic texts on Christ's resurrection is Charles Wesley's hymn "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." The final verse says:

"Soar we now where Christ has led,
Following our exalted Head;
Made like Him, like Him we rise;
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies."

Let us ponder the meaning of resurrection in every season, not just in the spring, as we wait in hope for the day when we too will undergo that dramatic transformation. link