All around the world this week Christians continue the two thousand year old tradition of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the witness of hundreds, maybe more, of his closest followers. While this event has changed the course of human history, for many of us the further away from this event we get, the less impactful it becomes. Why is that? The Bible answers this question by tellings us that we have propensity, a disposition, toward unbelief. In fact, even the closest friends, disciples, and followers of Jesus who saw Him perform many a supernatural miracle had a hard time believing. Our hearts live, as Ray Steadman once wrote, as “Saturday Children”. Ray writes in his Expository commentary on Mark: A Ruler who Serves, p. 210:

“Someone has called our present generation ‘Saturday’s children,’ and it is an apt term. Our great American cities (and culture) are, for the most part, teeming with pools of human misery where people live out their days in a kind of ritual dance toward death without hope or illusion. In the midst of an increasingly godless world, despair grips people’s hearts everywhere. Hopelessness and meaningless come crushing in on us from every side.”

Christians too often mirror our culture in this way. We get tangled up in the current worries and cares of the world. We have anxiety from gains and losses of material goods. Our physical world becomes all too consuming and we are overcome by the wave of angst that presents itself in our day to day lives. In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus Christ fundamentally stands opposed against the despair, superficiality and worry of our culture. This Sunday you have the opportunity to remind yourself and to be an example to your community that we are Sunday people. We live in light of the already completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross to the hope and steadfastness of the empty grave. Jesus is alive, life is full of hope because death is not final. Our world is in the process of redemption. Please consider what this means to a lifeless world, and ask yourself, do you reflect this hope?

Ben Melli