As I was reading back through my journal as I sometimes do, I came to my thoughts from Easter 2016. I feel compelled to share them today:

Loving God my Father through your son, my savior Jesus Christ, I am so thankful for your sacrifice. Even though you explained everything as plainly as you could, our human minds couldn't fathom the plans you had. I cannot imagine the devastation when you, the hope of the world, were laid to rest in the cold tomb. Your bloody lifeless body, limp with the weight of the flesh on your bones. Your humanity overcome by sin that wasn't yours. How shallow of us when we complain that life isn't fair.

What spoke to me the most today was that for your followers, their hope was gone. Literally dead. Every dream and vision they had of how you were going to save Israel, gone. What were they going to do? So, they hid. They went back to fishing, back to what was familiar and safe.

But then you rose...That wasn't in their script. They weren't counting on that. How could their humanity fathom that? Though he had raised dead in his earthly ministry...Shouldn't they be a little more used to the impossible happening? But sometimes we believe the lies of the enemy. Sometimes all seems lost. Our hopes dead. But did our dreams ever line up with his words? Did theirs? Or did we just choose to believe our own delusions? You'd think we'd learn not to put God in our box of tiny dreams... He's so much bigger. His plans much grander than anything we could imagine.

So today, on this Easter Sunday, when we remember you doing the impossible, let us surrender our dreams to you. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, " declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts..." (Isaiah 55:8-9) Our hope is ever in you. "Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." (Psalm 73:23-26)

Leigh