Museums all over the world are filled with displays of the work of individuals who impacted our lives in one way or another and forever changed life as we know it today.  The Wright Brothers changed how we travel and made the world seem like a smaller place we travel through the air from coast to coast.  Alexander Fleming was growing some bacteria when a stray spore drifted into his lab and landed in his culture plate and later became what we know as penicillin. Consider how our world has been impacted by the invention of plastic by a man named Leo Baekeland. Of course this list could go on forever, but I want us to focus on the one life that had a greater impact on humanity than all others combined. Through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ literally changed not one – but every aspect of our lives! His life changed our perspective on how we walk out our faith, how we live out our life and even how we approach death.  I love what an anonymous individual once expressed about this incredible truth:

“More than 2000 years ago there was a Man born contrary to the laws of life. This Man lived in poverty and was reared in obscurity. He did not travel extensively. Only once did He cross the boundary of the country in which He lived and that was during His exile in childhood. He possessed neither name, wealth, nor influence. His relatives were inconspicuous, uninfluential, and had neither training nor education. In infancy He startled a king; in childhood He puzzled the doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature, walked upon billows as if pavements, and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His services. He never wrote a book, and yet all the libraries of the country could not hold the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, and yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all the songwriters combined.

He never founded a college, but all the schools put together cannot boast of having as many students. He never marshaled an army, nor drafted a soldier, nor fired a gun, and yet no leader ever had more volunteers who have, under His orders, made more rebels stack arms and surrender without a shot being fired. The names of the past proud statesmen of Greece and Rome have come and gone. The names of the past scientists, philosophers, and theologians have come and gone; but the name of this Man abounds more and more. Though time has spread 2000 years between the people of this generation and the scene of His crucifixion, He still lives. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.”

Jesus Christ had this unprecedented level of influence because on the third day after His crucifixion on a cruel cross, He rose from the dead.  I know it isn’t Easter Sunday, but I encourage you to reflect today on the greatest event that has ever happened and celebrate the reality that He is alive! And because He’s alive – you and I are free to live!

Pastor Jeff

pastorjeff@lwwconline.comImage

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