Skylar's Blog & Podcast

The last good zombie movie I saw was Dawn of the Dead. The gist of this movie was like most other zombie movies. Some virus takes over a group of people and they start biting other people to infect them, too. Eventually the whole city is infected and only five people remain untouched by the virus or the zombies. I'm pretty sure you're all thoroughly confused what zombies have to do with Easter, but it's actually kind of simple. At the center of every zombie is this unusual process people go through to become zombies. It goes like this: someone is bitten or scratched by a zombie initially killing them. However, they don't die, do they? Instead, they come back to life as this completely different...thing.  Now is the time to pull all of this together. All of these movies with people coming back from the dead have really taken away from Easter. Why? Because they have turned the idea of someone coming back from the dead as a wild tale, a fantasy, or a stupid twist in a movie. So, when we hear the story about Jesus coming back from the dead we don't realize it, but we sometimes put His story on the same shelf as zombie movies or The Matrix (sorry if I ruined that movie for anybody). Maybe you're not like me, but there are times I hear about the resurrection of Jesus and it just isn't real to me. It's almost like those tall tales you hear when you're little about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox etc. The reason I think some of us do this is because of how we live. If we really believed Jesus came back from the dead...if we really believed Jesus beat death then there would be more excitement present in everything we do. Why? Because death, universally, is the number one fear of almost all people, and we don't have to be afraid because Jesus beat it. It's not permanent! In fact, death is a gateway into something better! Something perfect! This Easter, sit down and read Luke 23:50 through Luke 24:49 and really try and grasp what it's saying. Think about how Jesus did come back from the dead. Think about how He is not a stupid zombie movie, an ancient Egyptian dark wizard, or any made up character for that matter. Think about how He is the Son of God who was born in Bethlehem, lived 33 years, died a humiliating and horrible death, and after being dead for three days came back to life not as a ghost or spirit but as a resurrected being. Think about His disciples feeling the holes in his hand (Luke 24:38-39) and Him eating food with them (Luke 24:40-43). Think about something radical: think about Jesus overcoming death...beating death...and making it so we would never have to be afraid of it (death) ever again!