Rest.

Many reasons to be happy on this day.

Maybe it’s the day before you start a job after being unemployed for a long time.

Maybe it’s the day you’ve welcomed your first, second or third child into the world.

Maybe it’s the day you got to see friends and family you haven’t seen in a very long time.

Maybe it’s the day after you’ve gotten your drivers’ license or your first car registered.

Maybe it’s the first day you’ve started living in a home that’s not a shelter in a very long while.

Maybe it’s the day you got discharged from the hospital fully rested and restored.

Maybe it’s the day something new and great happened to you.

Whichever is your cause, you have more than enough reason to welcome this day as a happy day in your life. Therefore, hearing someone wishing you a Happy Easter might make you feel right at home for you have your own reason to be so happy about this day.

Keep in mind that for many, they may wish this day had never come into existence. For those who got attacked while being in the company of friends and family, they surely wish this was a bad dream.

For those who had to rush their loved one to the Emergency Room, it would be hard to digest today as a happy day.

For those who lost their job this past Friday, it may not have been an easy to acknowledge today as a happy day.

If religion had made it possible to believe that one can please God by their flesh and blood, then today was definitely an opportunity to prove to God one’s highest level of loyalty or zeal. Believing such occasion to be the greatest of all opportunities easily makes it the happiest day of anyone’s life who still look up to their works to justify their standing before God.

Yet, today marks a day when hundreds were killed and injured simply for gathering to celebrate the cause of the day.

Each day is not without trouble.

As Christians, we daily seek happiness. Happiness comes in many forms with the most common one being in having our workload lessened, our bills lowered, our to-do list shortened.

Christ knows about happiness. This is why he said:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

We’re all after rest. Whether it’s in the form of retirement, healing, closure, peace of mind, graduation, rest is what we all long for since the day we felt we had to work to earn anything of God. Fear will not lead us to rest. Anxiety will not lead us to rest. Worries will never lead us to rest. Christ alone leads us to rest. The new covenant alone leads us to rest.

“This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:10-12)

This covenant’s goal is to put our whole self to rest.

Whatever’s bothering you right now, seek rest in the new covenant.

Religious works can leave you empty and tired and confused. The new covenant is our way out of religious works.

“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7)

He saved us…He saved us…Rest now.