Victory!
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)
Soon, the NCAA Men’s National Championship game will crown the college basketball men’s champion for the year. One team will experience a jubilant celebration, and another team will be disappointed that it made it so far and came up short.
If you’ve ever been a part of one of those championship victory celebrations, you know it is hard to put into words the feeling you have as you celebrate with your teammates the achievement you have made together.
Those earthly victory celebrations have one drawback, though: the joy and exuberance last only for a little while. You pass the trophy around, take some pictures, celebrate, and then go back to real life.
On Easter, we “celebrate” a victory of a far different nature. This is not one earthly team claiming victory over another for a mortal crown. Today, we celebrate the victory that God won over death. This is not a fleeting earthly victory but rather a victory that is permanent and lasts eternally.
For me, that is one of the takeaways from Easter. In between our annual Easter celebrations, we will likely meet death face-to-face if someone close to us is called home to heaven. As we work through the sorrow and the emotions, looking ahead to the victorious reunion gives us the comfort that only God can give.
Yes, there is, as the Bible verse above says, a “sting” to death. But any victory that death might seem to gain over a Christian is only temporary and will be replaced with and surpassed by that eternal victory celebration.
I pray that your Easter celebration this year is a joyous foretaste of the eternal victory celebration we can look forward to enjoying one day in heaven!
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, on this most joyous day, thank you for living a perfect life and dying in my place to pay for my sins. Thank you for also rising from the dead to guarantee me that one day, I will also rise to conquer death and join you and all believers in that eternal victory celebration in heaven. Let that wonderful news comfort me when I must bid a temporary goodbye to a fellow Christian here on Earth. I ask this in your name because you are my victorious and living Savior. Amen.