Soul Scientist

Easter is far more than eggs, baskets, and candy, smocked dresses, pink cheeks, and little white patent leather shoes, flowers, songs, and family. It’s even more than getting up for sunrise services or reading or teaching about an empty cross and tomb. It’s recognizing and receiving and responding to the life-changing truth that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself came.

And He stayed.

And He suffered.

And He died.

And He rose again.

Easter is being overwhelmed by Jesus’ gift of life that makes us completely new in righteousness through His resurrection (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). Easter is attempting to understand that same mighty power which raised Jesus up from the grave is at work in us in our everyday lives (see Ephesians 1:19).

Jesus brought true and real and new life to us. He made us alive in Easter’s life-changing reality for this day and the next (see Colossians 1:27). He made Easter for us that we might know the complete fullness of every day in the childlike expectation of God at work in and through us. I claim to know that life-changing truth of my Jesus deep in the soil of my soul.

Yet, why am I surprised every time I experience a personal touch of God in my day? That perfect timing that points only to my Good God. That intricacy of details that speaks in a still small voice to my soul. That connection or opportunity which I could’ve never engineered or imagined.

If I truly believed God as Sovereign, I’d always be on tippy-toes looking for Him in every particle, piece, and parcel of my life. I’d be wide-eyed in wonder at this moment and peering around the corner for the next. I’d be fully expectant for Him to reveal more and more of the good He has planned for today and every tomorrow through eternity.

I yearn to expect Jesus to be at work in my life today. To live with open hands and heart and eyes fixed on the empty tomb and skies. To reside in the wonder that’s all around me and in me and the all of what I don’t know, much less understand. To abide in the knowing my Jesus always holds me fast amidst trial, temptation, or trouble.

I know in my head that God is in control of every molecule and moment, aspect and atom, circumstance and condition. But my heart often trades that Rock-solid truth for unrighteous fear. And that trade leaves me focused on fear and down in defeat because of my own failings to fix something I think would make me look good. My trading truth for fear strips me of childlike awe and chains me captive to worry. It makes me ignore that I can do nothing on my own while everything is possible with God (see Luke 1:37 and Philippians 4:13).

Yet my Good God continues to keep putting miracles in my life to remind me that He calls me to come and to stay and to suffer and to die and to be raised to life in Him every single day (see Galatians 2:20-21).

He’s patient to teach despite my many failures to learn. He’s long-suffering to stay despite my many attempts to leave. He’s steadfast to give despite my many rejections of best (just because I don’t think it’s good.)    

Yet my Jesus keeps teaching, staying, and giving. He keeps providing, sustaining, creating. And He keeps making all things new in and for me in the Easter of every day.

Revelation 21:5 EASY God, who was sitting on the throne, said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, because these words are true. Everyone should believe them.

Written by and copyrighted to Beth Madison, Ph.D., 2025.