Easter is a much bigger holiday here in Malawi than Christmas. There were prayer services through the day on Thursday and today, Good Friday, services were at 6:30 and 8:30 AM. On Sunday, there will be three services.
I loved hearing the church bells tolling this morning, gently calling us all to worship. During this season, what Jesus did for us on the cross is paramount in most believers' minds.
Many people, Christians as well as those practicing other religions, will take a long weekend holiday, and some shops will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday. Practically nothing will be open on Easter Sunday.
It is a beautiful thing to observe as the pace slows to honor the central event in all of world history, the sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I was thinking this morning about the respect Easter had, even by many in the secular world, when I was a child growing up in America. In many ways it was then a better America.
Today's secularized America tends to be decidedly irreverent and has in large measure lost its sense of reverence for the sacred. There are many distractions, and it is easy to be swept along in the cultural current.
There is amazing beauty, though, in all that Easter means. The unsearchable God was thinking of us, loving us, and wanting us to know Him. That amazing love compelled the Father to send his Son and the Son to willingly give himself.
It is through the cross the chasm that separated us from God was breached, opening the way for us to draw near and know God as our Father. Through His sacrifice, our debt is erased and our sins forgiven. That is what that first Easter was really about.
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