The End is Only The Beginning | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The End is Only The Beginning | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ken Grant
04/15/20
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As a follower of Christ who has grown up in the Protestant tradition, the Easter season has always tended to focus on Sunday or Resurrection Day as many refer to it. There is a sense of triumphalism that Jesus is alive from the dead, never to die again, and as a result all that He said is true and that we His followers have the promise of eternal life. Jesus does not hang on our crosses for He is no longer there. It is an upbeat, positive, and victorious approach to life and while not improper, it sometimes fails to respect much of what Jesus did and focused upon during His time on the Earth.

Other Christian traditions spend much more time focusing upon the time leading up to Easter Sunday and recalling in detail the sacrifice and pain that Jesus endured. They rightly recall that there is a key point in the gospels where Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem. While He did many miraculous deeds and spoke many deeply powerful truths, His primary purpose in coming from heaven to Earth was to die for our sins and that would take place in Jerusalem. His focus became about going to that place and acting in such a way that He would inevitably end up hanging on a cross on Good Friday as the sacrifice for the sin of the entire world. It is that pain and suffering that He endured, which we deserved, that changed everything in the relationship between God and those He had created.

While there is much to say about the final week of Jesus’ life and particularly about His death on the cross, there is a particular phrase that I have always found intriguing. The Apostle John wrote that when Jesus had done all that He had come to do and before He gave up His spirit, Jesus said the words, “It is finished.” He said this before the resurrection, before His various appearances to many, and before His ascension back to heaven. He had concluded the specific task for which He had come. The sacrifice required to enable us to have free access to the throne of God had been made and all of us as followers of Jesus have reason to be very, very thankful.

With all this, Jesus’ proclamation of an ending was merely the start of something even greater. Jesus left behind a people who empowered by the Holy Spirit would take Jesus’ message throughout the world. While His journey as fully man and fully God walking the Earth had come to an end, the story for His followers was only beginning. Every time I conclude a piece of writing, I think about how the ending of one task inevitably leads to the start of another. I must resist the temptation to see each task running into one another without meaning. For, as a follower of Jesus everything I do, whether writing or anything else, is filled with meaning because of Him. Yes, Jesus did finish His task, but it set in motion so many other tasks by we who are His followers and each is bathed with His life and His power and I, for one, am eternally grateful.

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