Growing up, all children dearly waited for every holiday on the calendar especially Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Easter, but Easter was the enigma of all holidays.
It was fixed to a particular day "Sunday”, it always came after "Good Friday” and for some reason it didn’t have a fixed date on the calendar, nevertheless it was a good reason for parents to cook their best meals and buy clothes.
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Its after growing up that I want to know what it means in the first place, besides the Palm Sunday that comes before it, the Good Friday and golden utensils, the wine, and the bread of the communion, what is the meaning of this day to a person walking in the murram roads of ‘ayabaraya’ and ‘bweyeye’ or streets of nyamirambo?
It would do you good to know that Easter and Passover are different, shocked? Don’t worry it happens even to the best among us.
While Passover is a Jewish Celebration done in remembrance of God’s deliverance upon the Jews from Pharoah (Exodus 12: 14-30), Easter is a Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Christians worldwide see the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be the central miracle of the Gospel. in fact, Paul one of the new testament authors writes "and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty” and rejoices in saying ”but now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep”.
For this reason, Easter Celebration is a hope probing celebration that since Christ was resurrected even those who we lost believing in him will be resurrected through him, it’s a celebration of the victorious Christ who is the living hope for all creation.
As Rwanda marks 30 years after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, the message of the Hope of Resurrection resounds in our hearts, just 30 years ago, many countries and international organizations saw Rwanda as a failed state, we lived in our dark days like Christ on the Cross, but the nation is beaming with Hope, and courage to face all that is to come.
Let this Easter celebration be a moment to remind us of the resurrection miracle, to remind us to be grateful for all the good things that have resurrected in our nation, and to infuse in us the hope for those that seem to be hard at the moment.
The author is a pastor at New Life Bible Church in Kigali