The Story of Easter

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If God knows everything, past, present and future, surely He saw
the whole story all laid out ahead of time: God creates man,
who really could choose to rebel; man in fact does so; and then
God is angry. So His plan -- which He surely had in mind the
entire time! -- is to take the penalty for man's rebellion on
Himself, thereby saving man and restoring things to the way
He made them in the beginning.

Why the whole charade, then? It's like a game of checkers played
with one's own self, feigning strategy and plotting moves, and then
moving around to the other side of the board and pretending to
counter-attack, perhaps with a playful "a-HA! Gotcha!" thrown in
just for entertainment...

God knew before He created man that man would fall; why the
seemingly pointless round of heavenly solitaire? He knew what
would happen, He knows what's happening now, and He's there at
the end of time, with absolutely no surprises (to Him) at how
it will all end.

There is only one reason why the Christian story exists at all:
LOVE.

God's "grand experiment" was to create Souls -- I like to call
us "Conscious Choosing Agents" -- who could, if they so chose,
enter into a Love relationship with Him, of their own volition,
freely, and to whom He could direct the perfect Love that is
central to His very nature.

Love always GIVES. The eternal Trinity, existing before all time
in a three-way community of Love, created Souls because that Love
spilled over and could do nothing BUT seek to take Love as far as
it could possibly go.

There was risk, to be sure: The awful, terrible, real Risk that
a Conscious Choosing Agent could actually spurn that Love,
opting instead to focus on itself, eventually self-destructing,
feeding on its own wretchedness forever even as it is fed to the
demons who hate God with a profound hatred.

The Ressurection of Jesus means nothing until this Risk is fully
appreciated: The precise intersection of Supreme Justice and
Perfect Love requires Punishment with one hand and offers Redemption
with the other; but the damned Soul, still perfectly loved
by its Maker, cannot be given less than what it, ultimately and
finally, demands to have: independence from Love.

The death of Jesus -- very God Himself -- satisfied the requirement
of Justice; His ressurection revealed for us the glorious New Creation
that this Love story intends for those who choose Him: Perfectly
glorified sons and daughters of God, able to love as perfectly as
we are loved, bound together forever in a joyful servant-Master relationship.

Yes, God certainly does know the whole story, and He is surely
at the end of Time already loving and being loved by His children.
WE, however, are hemmed in by Time, and on Easter we celebrate -- with
tremendous fanfare, and wonder, and awe -- the single moment in Time
when victory over even death itself was guaranteed for us.

He is our triumphant Groom, and we will be His purified Bride;
there will be a wedding, and a feast, and singing and dancing,
and never-ending eons of joy and peace and radiant beauty.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is first and foremost a LOVE Story,
and we can choose to marry Him and enter into His eternal Life,
or spurn His affection and spend a loveless eternity
in darkness and misery.

On this Easter, I choose Him, all over again.

Hosannah!! He is risen!!
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