Is God finished with us?

How good is it to live in Australia? There are a thousand things I could write about here but I just want to note the 10 for the price of 3 holiday deal coming up next week. Amazing. Do you think anyone will actually be at work next week? The forecast is great and the opportunities are endless!

I once had a conversation about the joy of holidays with a friend who worked as a funeral director and he said to me, holidays are great but death stops for no man. And he’s right. Usually we live ignoring death, but just occasionally it breaks through, it interrupts our otherwise wonderful Australian existence and it says, you have an end. 

Death in all its unjust complexity and tragedy is often one of the reasons people cannot fathom the idea of a God who loves us. More often, in the face of death, people see God as capricious, powerless or absent. Perhaps death is the sign that God is finished with us. Perhaps he’s given up. Perhaps he is out of solutions so he’s left us to do our best and then disappear forever. 

Is the relentless creep of death the sign that God is finished with us?

Well, the Easter weekend brings good news in the face of death. Easter reminds us that God is not finished with humanity and he does have plans. And ironically, at the centre of his plans for conquering death is death. 

You see, Good Friday is so much more than a public holiday.  It is so much more than a religious festival. It is so much more than an opportunity to eat a dozen hot cross buns and half a kilo of chocolate. Good Friday is an annual announcement that God is not finished with you and death will come to an end.

At the end of the Bible God promises that:

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (‭‭Revelation‬ ‭21‬:‭4‬)

And he brings this promise to fruition through the death of Jesus. 

Jesus, God the Son, walked up that Golgotha Road to the cross, giving himself to God the Father, and giving himself to death. He took upon his shoulders all our failures and inactions, all our terse words and injustices and death itself. There is a death we deserve and he bore it for us. He died instead of us, that we might live and become children of God.

Indeed, Jesus' death was the beginning of the end of God’s plan to give us life. So far is he from being finished with us that he continually holds out to us life through the death of his son. His son who died and rose again, conquering death and laying the path for our own defeat of death through faith in Jesus.  

And so here’s the thing, Jesus offers a path of life and forgiveness and hope and love. Jesus said of this path:

“I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full!”

"Follow me and you will have life!"

God has looked upon our world and his heart breaks for us. He longs to call you his child and welcome you into this new life he is preparing for all who follow him.

Easter announces that he has opened the way to this life through the death of Jesus. He died the death that conquered death for us.

So here’s the thing. God is not finished with you. He’s just getting started. 

And when you grasp this and believe this, you truly can have a happy Easter!