I love Easter Sunday. This Sunday, above all others, awakens my soul. Each Sunday for Christians is a way to celebrate our risen Saviour, to revive our spirits for the week to come when we are missionaries in our broken world.

I deeply miss the physical gathering together of the saints. I wish I could hear the voices of hundreds of Jesus followers around me raising a song to Him in worship.

Still, I am mindful that what Christians are celebrating has not changed: Christ Jesus did what He came to do. He died for the sins we have committed and have yet to commit. Though He died, He rose victoriously from death and now lives and sits at God’s right hand, ready to some day come to this world again. This Easter, I am reminding myself that we are the family of God and distance does not change that.

If this Easter, with all of its unprecedented happenstance, is finding you feeling a sense of loneliness and physical separation from the family of God, remember that in so many ways this physical separation from the body of the Church is similar to our current physical separation from God the Father. Some day soon, the global, era-spanning Church will be brought together in the throne room of Heaven, praising our risen Saviour.

So, as much as we are missing physically spending time with our brothers and sisters this Easter (and have been missing each other the past few Sundays), we can take comfort in the fact that when we gather together again it will be but a taste of a much better day – a homecoming, a family reunion.

He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

‘Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian, lift up your voice and sing eternal hallelujahs to Jesus Christ the King! The Hope of all who seek Him, the Help of all who find, none other is so loving, so good and kind. He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way. He lives, He lives, salvation to impart! You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.’

(Excerpt from the hymn He Lives by Alfred H. Ackley.)