Essay ~ Easter ~ NL ~ 4

Easter

By: Naomi Lea

     Easter is the holiday of brightly colored dresses and ovular shaped chocolates. It's the holiday of that annoying, stringy, fake grass that people keep putting it in plastic wrapped gift baskets. The world is painted in pastels and the weather slowly begins to permit short sleeves.

    
     Humanity as a whole should be so happy as earth's seasonal changes bring about new life; as spring bursts forth from its restful, silent, wintry state. Though there are natural fireworks of celebration occurring in nature, how is it possible that a person can be sad or depressed? Especially when there is nothing really wrong with her life?

     This person is also a Christian and should have a deeper connection to Easter and its significance in her life. A Christian believes that Christ died and was resurrected three days later to save creation from sin. That is more than enough to be happy about, yet this girl found no special thrill as the holiday approached.

     Every Sunday since the beginning of Lent, she kept making resolutions to start anew in certain aspects of her life; a new gym membership, a diet, a prayer regimen, new organizational apps, and the restarting of hobbies. Though she tried again and again to change and renew her life and find passionate ambitions again, nothing stuck. After a few days she would lose the drive; become lazy, restless, and self-pitying.

     Then she remembered the movie Thumbelina, the cartoon version by Fox and Warner Bros. It showed the "changing of the leaves" as a festival for the fairies. They would fly throughout the world and change the summer saplings into red, orange, and brown bowers. The change could not happen without the fairies' magic and without their doing, there wouldn't be the four seasons.

     Just as the world couldn't change on its own, neither could she change her own life without the power of the one who created the world. She tried to do all these things within her own strength. That is why they all failed. That is also why the failure stunned her into regression; it was a stymie in which she felt completely alone. As she continued to try again with yet another surely fool-proof plan, the cycle continued, resulting in the fall and stagnation of what she deemed as progress.

     This was continuing on until this girl had a heart to heart with her mother. Mothers play such variant roles at all our stages in life and this time, her mother came in as the ultimate preacher and motivational life coach. After tears of frustration and confusion were shed, it became clear to the girl that the problem lay within her will to do things on her own. She realized that, as cliche as it may sound: God is in control and He is the one that makes changes, not any earthly power.

     With that reawakening, she thought again towards Easter and what it meant. That resurrection of life, that ability to commune with God could not have happened with just humans willing it to be so. Even if people did their best to follow all of God's ordinances, waking up each day with good intentions not to sin, such strategies would not prevail. It's clearly recorded how well that plan worked in the Old Testament. The only way forward is to submit to the power of God, just as nature laid open and vulnerably submitted to the fairy magic which wrought the most beautiful changes.

     So as Easter drew near yet again, the girl thought to herself that maybe it was time to stop trying to make herself new. Instead, she figured she would let the fairy magic take root and transform her into whatever God had planned for her. She would be like the trees and flowers who have no choice but to obey their maker. She would wake up not trying to find out what gives her drive and motivation, but instead seek it through prayer and scripture. As she pondered such thoughts, she grew excited and eager for the coming Easter. It would be truly be a time of celebration, for now she knew that it would not be about her becoming new, but about new life being manifested within her. It would not be about cleaning up her own life and implementing changes, but laying down all personal agendas and allowing herself to be touched and washed. It was about putting down, not putting on. Just as Christ put down himself so that we may have life, so it is for the Believer to put down her own self.

     The girl now looked to the coming Easter with a quiet happiness. Her life felt rekindled. She knew with a blessed assurance that the fairy magic would keep changing the seasons and that God would bring changes in her, too.