Do Over; Don'tcha want one?

Today is Easter, probably the most important day of the year for most believers.
There are so many things that it means to the world. The fact that Jesus came to save us; born of a virgin, and lived a sinless life, but then gave His life for everyone (yes, everyone), and then rose again to show that we would (and can if we take it) have eternal life.

That’s pretty cool to me honestly, and I can’t understand how anyone could not want to take that. It took me a while (about 14 years) to fully understand that this is what everyone needed before I would take it, and I still don’t even know why I didn’t want that. I will never understand. A lot of this “stuff” is what we talked about today in church, though there was something else, two words, my pastor kept saying over and over that really struck me.

Do Over.

That’s really what he gave us. He gave us a chance to have a “do over”. Whenever we need one; because, let’s face it; we need a lot of “do over’s” in life. That’s what I realized that I needed this morning, a do over.

I woke up this morning with a fire inside that I haven’t felt in a while, I didn’t know exactly why, and still don’t, but it felt really good. I got up at about seven (pretty early for a Sunday I guess), made my coffee, and went outside to do my devotions. When I went to go and write in my journal (which I usually do when I really want to have a big discussion with Him), I realized that I hadn’t written in it in about almost a whole month, and the whole last entry was about how I needed to spend more time with Him. Well, we can see THAT didn’t happen.

I don’t even know why, and it really upsets me. It upsets me even more that in my last blog (which was written over a month ago) I said that I would be writing more and more often than I already did, and THAT didn’t happen either. And while I took these long “breaks” from REALLY communicating with God, a lot of things happened in my life, and not great things at that. My cat died, my great grandma died, I didn’t get re-hired at camp for this summer, my basement flooded. Those are just a few things, and all along I did ask God what this was for, what he wanted me to see. Now it’s obvious that he wanted me to spend more time with Him. I was trusting Him, and still running to Him, but I wasn’t trying to keep our relationship a two way street, it was more like a one way because the other lane had an accident blocking traffic from flowing correctly.

So today I’m taking a do over. Because I know that he will give it to me, He doesn’t care what I’ve done, because it’s in the past. And the only thing that matters to him is the present, and that I do my best to shine for Him, and that’s what He needed me to see. I don’t have the greatest past, but He doesn’t care about that because I am forever changed. Today my boyfriend approached me about how he wants to write a book, a book on purity and love from a teen male’s perspective, and how he wants me to help him with it, and maybe even put some input into it. The topic of purity has always been a “pressure point” for me, so to speak, because I haven’t been one of the purist of Christians that you could meet. But that has changed, and I am working to make myself better in this area, and today in church I realized that was what I wanted my “do over” to be about. To do what He has commanded, but to also use my “experiences” to help other people, and that was what He had for me when I got home, a chance to help myself, and other people. A chance for a do over. A chance to show people that there is another way, a truth, a light. And he died for us so we can HAVE that way.

What did I tell you? Easter has a lot of meanings.


Happy Easter, he is risen.