Digital Photography and the Resurrection

My photographer friend Camden Bennett took some pictures of my wife and me a few weeks ago. Then he uploaded them to his website and gave us access to them via a password. Pretty nifty.

So I downloaded the pictures to my laptop, and decided to make some prints at everyone’s fine arts center, Costco. They went from my computer to the Costco photo center website, where I selected the size prints I wanted, and placed my order. We picked up the prints about 2 hours later.

Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying

I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.

Those words were spoken by the character of Andy Dufresne in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Based on a Stephen King novella, Shawshank is a story of friendship and how people triumph over horrific and unfair circumstances.

What Andy meant, I suppose, is that regardless of how grim your circumstances, you need to decide to live - to somehow make the best of it and keep on keeping on.

I admire the sentiment, but according to the Bible you’re supposed to do both. Get busy dying AND get busy living. In that order. Because, like Jesus said, John 12:24, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

The Most Wonderful Life

In Frank Capra's beloved film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey gets to see what the world would be like if he had never been born. The absence of his life ripples through Bedford Falls, and presents a parallel universe that is ugly and cruel. He ends up begging to live again, and concludes that his life, with all its challenges, is truly wonderful.

Did you ever think what our world would be like if Christ had not risen from the dead? I considered simply pasting a graphic of a smoldering cinder as my assessment of where our planet would be without the Resurrection. I just don’t believe this world would have survived.

 

If Jesus had not been raised:

• No payment for our sins and no forgiveness

• No heaven, only hell

• No gospel message

• No transformed lives throughout history

• No apostolic witness and no church

• No New Testament, and an Old Testament riddled with false prophecy

• No Christian hospitals, orphanages, half-way houses, or homeless shelters

• No Apostle Paul, Constantine or Augustine

• No Gutenberg, John Wycliffe, or Martin Luther

• No William Tyndale, John Calvin, or John Bunyan

• No Jonathan Edwards, Wesley brothers, or George Whitefield

• No William Carey or D. L. Moody

• No C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham or J.I Packer

• No peace for the present or hope for the future

But thank God, this is not a day for terrible possibilities. This is the day we set aside to proclaim the central truth of our faith: Our Savior died for our sins and was raised from the dead! And because Jesus rose,

• We who know Him are indwelt by the Spirit and live in the power of His grace.
• We have the hope of heaven.
• Those who died in Christ wait for us there, and we will be reunited.
• We are redeemed, forgiven, justified, reconciled, and adopted..
• Our lives have eternal value and our actions have everlasting consequences.
• We know that love, truth, justice, and hope will prevail over hatred, lies, oppression, and despair.
• We have a message to share that is supernaturally transforming from a Bible that is absolutely trustworthy.
• We’re part of a band of redeemed sinners that stretches back through the centuries, and marches forward into the future until our King returns to claim all that is His.

 Oh, Jesus, how thankful we are that You rose again!

HE IS RISEN, RISEN INDEED!

First Sight

What must it have been like for the newborn Baby Jesus to open His eyes for the first time? Newborns' eyes work just fine, but it takes a while before their brains can process what they see.

But would that have been true for Jesus? When the eternal Son of God opened His eyes as a baby, did He see the colors and lights, the shapes and shadows of the world He created? Was it beautiful or disappointing? More like an impressionist painting or HD television?

What did the newborn think and feel as He saw for the first time with human eyes this planet He had created, now groaning in its fallen agony?

But there was another “first time” when Jesus opened His eyes, and for me it is even more amazing to think about. What must it have been like for the Savior to open His eyes again after three dead, sightless days in the grave?

When He stepped out of that tomb, did He see the glory of the broken creation made new, the future He guaranteed by His sacrifice and victory?

And then that makes me remember how His resurrection triumph carries you and me along in its wake. John reveals Him as “the firstborn of the dead” (Rev. 1:5). “Firstborn” means He is first in priority and position, the first of many to come.

It’s true that when Christians die, they go immediately into the presence of the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). But that’s not the final glory. Like our Savior, one day we will open our long-dead physical eyes again, and the world's transformation, like our own, will remind us why we love Him so.

The first time He opened His eyes they were the eyes of earth’s weakest and most vulnerable creatures—a newborn baby. The second “first time” He opened His eyes, He was the King, Conqueror of death, hell, and sin.

HE IS RISEN!

He is Risen!

 Risen indeed!

Christ’s resurrection in three words:

PROOF

For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. Acts 17:31, NIV

 PARDON

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Romans 10:9,10 ESV

 POWER

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:3-11, ESV

Happy Resurrection Day!