April 21 – Her Majesty, The Queen’s Birthday

Today marks Queen Elizabeth’s 88th birthday.  While her official birthday celebration occurs in June each year with the Trooping of the Colour, she will continue on with her Easter Court entertaining at Windsor Castle through the end of April.  Also marking this day is the unveiling of her latest photograph taken by renown photographer, David Bailey!  This magnificent capture of her vivacious spirit was taken at Buckingham Palace last month.  A new year in the life of this Monarch begins!

Birthday Portrait Of Queen Elizabeth II By David Bailey via royalcentral.com

New beginnings and rebirth also mark today, Easter Monday

The egg is a universal symbol for Easter, almost more so than the Cross these days.  A symbol chosen as it represents new birth, new beginnings, and a fresh start.  This is just what Jesus accomplished on the first Easter morning with the Resurrection.  He rose from the dead in a fully healed body from the tortures and death three days prior.  This Risen Lord is the One who allows us the same new life!  John 3:16 says it most succinctly, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  He repeats this theme in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  John precedes this quote of Jesus by telling what you will find by following Him (Jesus), His way.  “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God; trust also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  You know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14:1-4)

Jesus sets the example, the way, to live on earth as fully human and resurrected.  He showed himself to the disciples after the resurrection to not only prove himself as the One Messiah foretold in scripture and in person to them, but also to instruct them to get out there and tell the rest of the world!  In other words, Jesus was telling the disciples to also live “resurrected lives” a certain way.  A resurrected life is how one decides to live like Jesus, and as instructed by Jesus (his way/the way), after meeting and accepting Jesus as Lord.  It is not the life one lives just on Easter Sunday, looking like the model Christian sitting in the church pew flanked by her beautifully appointed family members.  As our rector said at the conclusion of his Easter sermon, it is the resurrected life you decide to live on Monday after Easter, and Tuesday, and so on that matters.

How do you live a resurrected life?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Ask yourself if you are living life your way, or Jesus’ Way.

2. When you get that nudge, funny feeling in the pit of your stomach, or cannot stop thinking about the person you just heard is in the hospital or in need, GO visit him or her!  And, in the name of the Resurrection, please deliver a meaningful message.

3. Start your day a little earlier to create, or extend your quiet time with God.  Even 15 minutes toward this goal will cause new life for the rest of your days, weeks and months.  Journal what changes occur to this new daily beginning.  Share your growth and change with another.  It will almost always encourage another to do the same.

4. Seek to enrich the life of another on a regular basis.  Choose your regularity (daily, weekly, monthly), make the appointment with the agency or person you aim to enrich, mark your calendar, and DO IT.  Think of it as a doctor’s appointment that took months to schedule.  You would never break this appointment.  Treat your resurrected life changes as unbreakable appointments.

mow the lawn, or pull the weeds from the garden of an elderly neighbor

take dinner and/or flowers to a widow, elderly person, someone lonely or a family with a new baby

call a local elementary school to ask to be a regular reading buddy for struggling students

join a new service committee at your church and serve with gusto

offer to take the altar flowers to hospitalized parishioners on set Sunday afternoons

start a Bible study in your neighborhood or community

5. As you enrich others, ask God to give you the words He would have you say to those you are helping.  As He directs, speak His Word. (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.” John 1:1 Jesus is the Word.)  It can be as simple as saying, “Jesus loves you, and I do, too.”

Here’s to celebrating Resurrected Living Today!

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