I’m not a scholar, so I don’t pretend to understand all the Christian, Jewish, and pagan traditions that have melded together to create the Easter holiday. Something about springtime, passover, Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It’s all a part of how bunnies became part of the secular rituals.

We don’t know for sure when Christ was executed so cruelly on a cross, then placed in a tomb and left for dead. We know he arose 3 days later and turned the world upside down.

The dead in Christ shall rise and be made new. Forgiveness, redemption, grace, mercy. These aren’t concepts we Christians typically focus on. The “fundamental” among us fixate on judgment and the wages of sin, but that’s only part of the story.

Ultimately, believing that Jesus Christ came to this earth as God made human, believing that he worked miracles, and that he suffered emotionally and physically, that he hung on a cross, died, and then walked out of his tomb 3 days later — well, that’s what makes Jesus different from every other historic-turned-religious figure.

Christ is the Son of the living God who does believe in judgment. Even more, though, he believes in redemption and he sacrificed his only Son — watched him endure incalculable anguish so that we might choose to be redeemed.

Might. Choose. to be redeemed.

Thank you, Father, that we have a choice. That mercy is easily within our grasp, that salvation is one small step away. Lord Jesus, thank you for making a way for redemption — allowing us to be made new, washed in the blood of the lamb.

Let us remember on this cold Easter morning.