To Christians at Easter He’s Got My Back (and Yours)

I am a contented man, and high on the list of reasons for my contentment is my opportunity to serve the people of our community as the Herald publisher. I am not alone at the Herald in this; the staff is very much aware that a newspaper is a community trust. In fact, it is a trust recognized by our nation’s Founding Fathers as an integral part of a democracy.
As a younger person, I did not pay that fact much attention. I worked to be a responsible newspaperman because that was good business, but as I have grown older, I do my work for a different reason. Growing older, with ever-greater cognizance of my mortality, has made me much more contemplative.
I grew up in a Christian home but being a Christian did not govern my thinking. Now it does. I look at the creation and stand in awe of it, and from there stand in awe of the One who spoke it into being. Then in recognition of that enormous power, I tell myself it would be wise to be in step with that power.
It makes sense to me that He knows how my screw-ups drag me down. His solution for that problem is what we celebrate at Easter. Christ died on the cross to pay for my sins (yours too, but I’m talking about me) so I can focus only forward. How empowering is that!
Now, not only can I focus forward, I also have the assurance that I have no problems as I go forward: God has all the problems, I only have assignments. That is because He’s the one who makes the plans for my life, not me. So, as I seek His plans for me and do them, I do so with His power in me, the power that made the universe.
So I cannot lose, because nobody beats Him. Whenever things seem to be going wrong, I am learning to wait, to take a long-range view. After all, He told me that He feeds the birds day after day, and I am much more important to Him than the birds.
Christ told me that He came so that I could have a rich, full life, one of peace and joy.
Young people feel sorry for us old people, but I don’t. I blissfully enjoyed my youth, but I was an ignorant child, lacking life’s experiences. I prefer the gray hair and the understanding that comes with it to blissful ignorance of immaturity.
Our Lord has crafted for us a wonderful life. Come, let’s celebrate Easter together.
Art Hall, publisher
PS: These are the verses my contentment is based upon:
• For nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1:37
• Christ suffered for our sins. He never sinned, but he died to bring us sinners safely home to God. 1 Peter 3:18
• But one thing I do: forget what is behind and reach forward to what is ahead. Philippians 3:13
• Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26
• For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
• I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10