The Eastertide Joy Challenge

This is the Eastertide Joy Challenge we are issuing at Grace Vancouver Church this season, as we continue to travel through our sermon series in the book of Daniel. Consider taking the challenge with us!

The Eastertide Joy Challenge:

Daniel lived in a world filled with sorrow, evil and persecution. And the Lord gave him prophetic visions detailing this evil in great detail. All this was so disturbing, that Daniel is even described at the end of chapter 8 as remaining in bed for a few days. Still, in the midst of his sorrow, Daniel knew that he served the God of Heaven whose Kingdom alone would always win out. Because of that knowledge, Daniel approached the world with a hopeful vision serving it faithfully in his daily responsibilities and praying fervently for it (Daniel 8:27 into Daniel 9).

This Eastertide season we recognize God’s sovereign reign in the world in a way that Daniel only anticipated, because Jesus’ resurrection was the ultimate vindication of God’s power over all evil, injustice, sin and death. Our story is one of triumph and resurrection. We can be like Treebeard in Tolkien’s trilogy who is described as “sad, but not unhappy.” He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! 

So the Eastertide Joy Challenge for the rest of this wondrous season until Pentecost Sunday (May 20th) is this:

1. Take up the challenge for the next five weeks to renew yourself in the areas of:

            a. Prayer- egs. could be interceding for a neighbour, friend or family member
                              to know Christ, doing daily morning and evening prayers, i.e. Daily
                               Office, praying each day for the world, the church and city.

and/or

             b. Service- egs. could be in serving a neighbour, friend or family member in
                                 intentional ways or re-committing your daily life  and work to the
                                 Lord each day, taking up a new service project or opportunity.

2. Expect to be surprised by joy as you renew your obedience in these areas.

3. Write down some of those moments of joy, great and small alike.

4. Post one-sentence testimonials on the Grace Van “apple tree” that our GV kids will be constructing in the coming weeks.

5. Look forward to celebrating Christ’s resurrection joy with the GV family around Ascension Day or Pentecost Sunday!

Eastertide and New Possibilities

… Easter week itself ought not be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in Church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up. . . .

In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again- well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But you don’t want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of Easter season, until ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. . . . if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.

Tom Wright in Surprised by Hope

The Gift of Resurrection

"Life comes again to us as Gift, a free and divine gift.... Adam is again introduced to Paradise, taken out of nothingness and crowned king of creation. Everything is free, nothing is due and yet all is given. And therefore, the greatest humility and obedience is to accept the gift, to say yes- in joy and gratitude."

-Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World

"He is not here; He is risen!"

-The two angels to the women in Luke 24