Happy Easter to ALL!!!  As we celebrate this wonderful occasion I hope this will put a smile on our faces.  It’s called, “All I Need to Know About Life I Learned from the Easter Bunny” and it goes like this:

1. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
2. Everyone needs a friend who is all ears.
3. There’s no such thing as too much chocolate.
4. All work and no play can make you a basket case.
5.  Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day.
6. To show your true colors sometimes you have to come out of your shell.

More seriously, however, I want us to reflect on the lesson this pandemic has taught us about how Easter is about turning a negative into a positive.

You see, usually in life we consider a negative to be a bad thing.  The stock market going down is a negative.  Your team losing the game is a negative.  Your car needing expensive repairs is a negative.  Jesus being arrested and crucified is a negative.

But this Coronavirus has taught us that sometimes a negative can be a positive.  Because when you’re awaiting the results of a coronavirus test what you want to hear is not “positive” but “negative.”

Same with waiting for the results of a health biopsy.  What we want to hear is not “positive” but “negative”!

Easter is a perfect example of the fact that sometimes God can use a negative and turn it into a positive.  The arrest of Jesus by the authorities and his death the Cross was considered to be a negative in every way.  His disciples were wondering what they would do now that the one they had followed for three years was dead and gone.  They were living in fear for their own lives.  Everything about Jesus’ death was negative.

Until that first Easter Sunday morning.  That’s when God revealed how he could take a negative and turn it into a positive.

As we read in Matthew 28 when the women who had come to grieve at Jesus’ tomb encountered the angel who said to them, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.  Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead!”

And that dear friends is the message of Easter!

– That God takes something negative and turn it into something positive. 

– That God can take a crises and turns it into opportunities to learn and grow.

– That God can take darkness and turn it into light.

– That God takes death and turn it into life.

As Paul wrote in those wonderful words from Romans 8:28:   “All things work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose.”

So, as we celebrate Easter this year let’s embrace the positives that can come out of negatives.   Christ’s death was to the world a terrible negative.  But his resurrection from the grave was a wonderful positive that has changed human history and hopefully has changed our lives.   May that reality empower us as we face every challenge of life!