It’s Resurrection Day! Today, with joy above all joys, we celebrate the victory of life over death, light over darkness, mercy and grace over the otherwise dark necessity of judgment. This is the day above all days, when the familiar passage is no cliché:

 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)

Skeptics think it’s too good to be true. It really is that good, except it’s also true.

And oh, yes, it’s good. It’s the best thing God ever did. It’s the answer to our deepest fear — death — and the door into our greatest hope: eternal life with the Author and Source of all goodness and love.

It’s very good. As I’ve reviewed and edited various articles and reflections on Easter for The Stream this week, I’ve been struck by the huge variety of ways in which people experience the joy of Christ’s resurrection. For me it’s a time of recognizing how great God’s work can be.

I have often prayed that in some way God show His glory through my life. Easter reminds me that this might involve Him bringing me through a death of sorts — because that’s when He does His greatest, most glorious work: following a death, when He brings new life.

God’s ways are often paradoxical like that. The first shall be last, the meek shall inherit the earth, and His best life-giving work came after the most awful death, the death of His own Son. It might sound strange to inject that note of paradox into Easter; but Easter wouldn’t be the victory it is apart from the enemy it has vanquished.

This is reality, not theory. I’m writing this just before Easter. In just a few hours I’ll be attending a funeral. My wife’s aunt died peacefully in the Lord, at the right time, following a long illness. We used to live fairly nearby, but even after we moved away, if my wife got on a phone call with her, I knew I had to make other plans for the whole rest of the evening. Sara would be on the phone for hours. So this aunt was no distant relative. We are grieving, yet we are celebrating as well, for we know God has just done His greatest work in Aunt Frankie’s life.

We look forward to Him doing the same for each of us someday, and meeting her and others we love in the final state we call Heaven.

We also see how God does great work following a different, a metaphorical kind of death. I’m talking about the mini-deaths we all experience from time to time: the death of a dream, the death of a relationship, the death of some hope, or sometimes even what seems like the death of hope altogether.

Again, this is not just theory. The greatest thing God ever did to build my character and my career came through one of my hardest experiences.

If you are in a difficult place, you might wonder whether God is there for you at all, and all this talk of glorifying God in your suffering may seem strangely irrelevant. That’s okay. God has made His glory known through the Resurrection, and the thing that might matter most to you is just to catch a glimpse of it there this Easter morning

You may be grieving the death of a loved one much closer than my wife’s aunt, the ruination of a relationship, a serious disability, the pain of a wayward child. I wouldn’t dream of dismissing the pain that you feel. When the Apostle Paul said, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26), he wasn’t just talking about victory, he was acknowledging that death really is our enemy. I cannot stand the facile, seemingly-Christian answer that death can be good. Death is hostile to us, and sometimes we feel that hostility in full force.

Yet Christ is risen! Death is defeated. That’s what’s good: not the enemy, but the enemy’s defeat! One day it will be utterly destroyed. For those who believe (as it says in John 3:16-17), there is life, not perishing; there is salvation, not condemnation. There is reason for hope. This is God’s greatest glory revealed for us all.

Again: Christ is risen! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!