Keeping the "High"

Easter is my favorite holiday…partly because I was born on Easter. As Easter is a rotating holiday, it has only landed on my birthday three times but each time has made a definite and poignant mark in life. There is something amazing that happens at Easter. There’s an energy and excitement that radiates within our lives. We shout and declare, “Christ is Risen Indeed”!

For the last few days, I have heard many comments praising our preteens on their performance on the black light routine. They shared how this performance was memorizing, moving and dynamic. They shared how the Holy Spirit has impacted them throughout this performance and how significant it had been to demonstrate the power of Jesus’ resurrection. And I say, “Amen to that!”

First off, “Thank you preteens for leading us in such a transformational way. You ministered to us beyond our greatest expectations. You helped us experience the Jesus’ narrative in a way that drew us into the story and respond to the glory of God as we declared together, ‘Arise, Jesus, my Lord is alive!’”

However with all these comments it made me stop and think…how long will this last? We speak of mountaintop experiences and many of us recognize we can’t live in this extreme. But how can we take this spiritual “high” we experienced on Sunday and continue to allow it to resonate and affect us with a power that energizes us throughout the following days, weeks and even year?

Reading Wednesday’s gospel reading, John 15:1-11, I am reminded that it is our actions that energize us. “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). It is living out the resurrection that continues to give us the “high.” It isn’t a church service, it isn’t a specific pastor; it isn’t a class or even a great performance.

It is living out the hope of Jesus Christ through each relationship we develop, through each way we give back to those around us, throughout our community and throughout the world. It’s how respond to social justice issues and the equal treatment of all persons. Its waking up each moment affirming that they only way to respond to the new life, new freedom you have received through Christ is through loving God and loving others. And when you make a choice to do this, you choose to live in the resurrection, in the moment—all of a sudden you’ll find that you can live with a “high” that never fades. Because it’s when you “do” and bear the fruit of the resurrection that you are able to experience the life that energizes and radiates and lasts to infinity and beyond…