You Going to the Dance?

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Each year April begins a little weird for me. My mother and my father both died in April and other relatives have passed this month, too. So when the calendar tells me it’s the fourth month of the year, I cringe a bit. I say to myself, “Who this time?” And then I shake off the superstition and I say a prayer.

Someone else, very special to me, died in April, too. Well, no one knows the specific day or month, but it is this day, Good Friday, when we remember the death of Jesus.

I’ve seen the Passion of the Christ and I’ve heard the sermons where they spare no gruesome detail in describing His torturous death on the cross.

But my heart doesn’t understand. I have no frame of reference to really “get” someone making the ultimate sacrifice for me in such a painful way. He became sin for me???

However, I can take today and say thank you. I can make time to meditate on the crucifixion, bend my knees, raise my hands and offer praise.

Of course, there is a huge difference between my parents’ death and Jesus’. (Besides the obvious humans vs. God thing.) And that, of course, is the resurrection.

Our faith as Christians is not founded on the cross. It is built on the fact that we serve a living, resurrected Christ.

Today I sit quietly and try to comprehend the incomprehensible. I whisper, “Thank you.”

But Sunday, well, Sunday I DANCE! I shake my ample booty (in the name of Jesus, of course :0) ) I kick up my heels, I two-step with John across the kitchen floor and I greet my friends with “He is RISEN! He is Risen, indeed!”

And that party takes the sting out of April and fills me with joy.