This Easter Sunday my family and I will be on a plane flying home from a vacation in San Francisco. When we planned the trip, we thought that an extra day of vacation would be worth not being able to go to church on Easter Sunday. Although we knew that it was not ideal to miss the Easter service, we wanted to make the most of our limited time visiting some of our dearest friends. It was a difficult decision and after we had booked the flights, I started having second thoughts. I called the airlines to see if it was possible to switch our return to Saturday. The change fee was outrageous, so we resigned ourselves to spending Easter Sunday on the plane.
As these plans continued to bother me, I asked myself: would I have ever booked a flight for Christmas morning? No, I would not have even considered it. I would never plan to travel on Christmas morning because it is too important to me to be able to celebrate such a special day with friends and family. I look forward to our family traditions and spending time together as we rejoice in the miraculous birth of Christ. As I sorted through all of this, I realized that both my thoughts and my actions clearly reflected that I give more significance to Christmas than I do to Easter.
And yet, in terms of the relative importance of Christian holidays, Easter really is the most important day of the year in the Christian calendar. It is the climax of everything that Christianity is about. Christ’s birth is just the beginning of God’s amazing plan to redeem His people and restore our relationship to Him. It is in Christ’s death and resurrection that we are given life, not merely in Christ’s birth. But for some reason, Christmas has somehow surpassed Easter in terms of relative importance to me. As someone who tries to be thoughtful about my faith, I could now see that this was something that I was really getting wrong. I was missing Easter, the important day in which we have the opportunity to celebrate God’s incredible grace in Christ.
