As our community and world continues to deal with stopping the spread of the Coronavirus, I pray that your family is healthy.  Whether it’s distance learning with the kids, balancing work, out of work, struggling through loneliness, separated from loved ones, or serving  the community,  we each have our own challenges right now, and for many of us they are new challenges. Maybe you are one of the many fighting the virus, I would love to be praying for you. 

I had so many plans this Easter. Maybe you did too.

Our church, where my husband is one of the pastors, was suppose to have our first service in our brand new building. So much work and love has been put into our new home…the big reveal on Easter Sunday! Thankfully we are still having an online service to connect with each other. Not what I had planned.

I was suppose to again host the Easter Sunrise Service at SeaWorld. I have started Easter morning with my Z family and this community doing that very same thing for 15 years! Thankfully, our service has moved to a broadcast on the radio so we can watch the sunrise together. Not what I had planned. 

This year I won’t see my niece, Morgan, for Easter. From Easter eggs hunts when she was little to as an adult when she would spend the night to join me for the Easter Sunrise Service, I was with Morgan.  I have never not seen her for Easter in her 25 years of life. Neither has my entire family.  Not what I had planned. 

This year will also be the first year in the last 40-something of my life that I won’t sit around my mommas table to gather on Easter.  No matter what the day looked like, we all always ended up around that table with an abundance of food thanking God for his blessings and for each other. This year will look more like a social distant walk around the neighborhood and an air hug to say goodbye. Not what I had planned. 

More than likely your reality is not what you had planned either. 

Over 2,000 years ago, the followers of Jesus weren’t planning for what was about to happen either. They watched their leader stripped of his clothes and dignity. Fitted with a crown of thorns. He was brutally beaten and then mocked as he was paraded through the crowd to the cross, sentenced to the worst possible kind of death.   

No, it’s not what they had planned.  But for those of us that know the story, we can see now that God was up to something!  Three days later, an empty tomb…evidence that Christ had risen.

Through Him, we can have the assurance of life everlasting. Through Him we can experience peace in the middle of uncertainty and hurt. 

That was the plan. All along. 

It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t what the disciples planned.  But, it was in fact THE PLAN…and it changed the world forever! 

God has a plan, even today and in this season. While things may look and feel different, he is still up to something. 

I’m still thanking God today for his many blessings and for the people he has put in my life. I’m thanking him for things like FaceTime, where I can still see a part of my heart on a screen. I’m thanking him for new traditions that seem off but that are still so special for my kids. I’m thanking him that even in this time of waiting, he is still at work.  I’m thanking him for Jesus.  He is risen! He is risen indeed!

His light overcame the darkness and it will continue to!