A L L E L U I A !

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Call me crazy – but I buy it – hook, line, and sinker! I know that it is popular to test our faith with enormous scrutiny, and while Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and others are trying desperately to cast doubt on all religion (or at least religious institutions), I am happy to remain in the category of what they might call “voluntarily ignorant.”

But is it really ignorant to voluntarily embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ? To affirm my belief that Jesus of Nazareth died, was buried, and then when his friends went to the tomb, they found it empty? That our Messiah rose from the dead, as he told his followers that he would? That Jesus Christ appeared to his disciples in the days and weeks that followed? Is it ignorant to affirm that in Christ death no longer has power over us? That God’s ultimate act of salvation is made complete? For me, it seems harder NOT to believe. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, we do not hunger and thirst for anything unless our appetite can be satisfied, and all of us hunger, thirst, yearn for communion with our Creator. In our faith, in our Gospel, that appetite is satisfied, as Christ graces us with eternal life – eternally in the presence of our creator.

Do I know exactly what our own resurrected life will be like? I have NO CLUE! I can read the speculation and theologizing of the greatest minds in history – and I can even read the skepticism from our atheist and agnostic fellow sojourners. But each time I do, I feel sad. Sad that there can be such disbelief, such pessimism that our Creator wanted so dearly to bring us home that God visited us, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.

Call me crazy, but I believe! I believe in the Resurrection! I believe in our Salvation! I believe that Christ has Liberated me from sin and death and invited me to share in eternal life!

I believe!