It’s Easter. So What?

I don’t remember much about Easter as a kid. What I do remember isn’t very pleasant.

Hard pews. Long church services. Wearing some pastel-looking suit my mom bought for me.

Things were a little better after church when we usually had some kind of Easter egg hunt. The chocolate eggs weren’t too bad either. But that was about it.

To me, Easter seemed like another excuse for people to go to church…and a lesser complement to the celebration of Christmas. Coloring eggs is nice but nothing beats a boatload of gifts around a Christmas tree…at least if you are a kid.

Even after I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior at age 12, I don’t remember Easter meaning too much. I certainly grasped the idea of Jesus rising from the dead…but again it almost seemed like a lesser complement to the cross and Jesus dying for my sins.

I didn’t really “get” Easter.

Until 1996.

That was the year that my sister, Jill, died.

I will never forget her.

Olive skin. Beautiful green eyes. Gentle spirit. She was often my babysitter as a kid. I remember her making school assignments for me. Grading my “work.” Reading to me. Playing games. Teaching me songs. Painting my toenails. I try to forget that last part.

She had a brain aneurysm while still in high school (I think around 1978). I remember waking up to her screaming in the bathroom, yelling that her head hurt. I stood frozen outside the door while my parents tried to help her up…carrying her through the hallway, out the front door, to the car.

It was a Saturday morning. I stayed at home watching cartoons…hearing bits and pieces from my older brothers and sisters as they talked on the phone.

I was too young to fully fathom what was going on. No one really talked to me. I just sat and listened…and watched cartoons.

The next scene I remember was being gathered in a hospital conference room. The doctor gave her a 50% chance of living. She was in a coma. A tumor had caused a blood vessel in her brain to burst. There was no way of knowing what damage had already been done. I remember my mom saying with tears in her eyes and emotion in her voice, “Well, if you have never prayed, then now is the time to do it.”

I think a few people in our family struggled to verbalize a prayer. But we were sporadic church-goers. We didn’t know how to pray, particularly as a family. We didn’t even know the One we were trying to pray to.

The next few weeks and months, Jill slowly recovered. I made a few trips to the hospital but was always too young to see her. When I finally did, I was struck by her bald head and sunken cheeks. She had been through a battle and had barely survived.

But survive she did. And without a hint of brain damage. I witnessed a miracle and didn’t even know it.

The next years saw many life changes. Jill got married, had two boys. I graduated from high school, entered Bible college. Our family changed too. Jill’s brush with death seemed to sober us, wake us up. We became closer to one another. We became closer to God. First, my older brother trusted Christ, then my sisters, including Jill, then myself. We began to get to know the One whom we had tried to pray to in that hospital several years before.

Then, like an unwanted guest, the cancer in my sister’s brain came back.

She fought hard. Radiation. Remission. Surgery. Alternative medicine. Prayer. But the cancer did not relent. It kept coming back with more and more aggressiveness. She became weaker. Thinner. More tired. Less tied to this life.

I hated it.

I hated seeing my beautiful sister lose her hair, lose her color, lose her weight, lose her strength…and slowly lose her life.

I hated cancer.

I hated death.

My sister lost her battle with cancer on Wednesday, March 6, 1996. I heard the news literally 30 minutes before I was to teach my youth group in New Orleans on the hope of the resurrection. The lesson was all outlined, printed, and prepared. But now it had new meaning. I wept as I taught. Two of the youth gave their lives to Christ that night.

Four weeks later it was Easter Sunday. It was the first Easter that I truly celebrated…that I truly understood.

Jesus is alive. The grave could not hold Him.

Jesus conquered death. Its power has been broken.

And now I have hope.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:22-26)

Let’s be honest. If Jesus didn’t rise from dead, then we really don’t have any hope. Death is it. The dead are gone. We can sugar-coat it all we want. The reality is that this brief, cruel, meaningless, random life is all we have. Let’s eat, drink, and drown our misery with feigned happiness because tomorrow we die.

But if Jesus did rise from the dead…then He is God…and out of love He has entered our world…and He has borne our sin…cancelled our debt…died our death…and given us the assurance of a resurrected life.

Easter is not just a holiday. It is the only day that gives us a real reason to celebrate.

It is our only hope.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

My sister lost her battle with cancer on Wednesday, March 6, 1996.

But Jesus Christ won the battle with death on Easter Sunday, AD 33.

And because He won, my sister is alive. And I will see her again.

Without sin. Without pain. Without cancer. Without sorrow. Without death.

Do you believe this?

I do.

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