Growing Spiritually Through Easter

When I was a kid, I looked forward to Easter for the fun. The arrival of Easter coincided with lengthening days and warmer weather, which meant more time outside and heralded the eventual end of the school year. In those days, Easter meant dyeing eggs in pretty pastel colors, eating chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, and other goodies, and donning a fresh spring outfit complete with squeaky, shiny patent leather shoes.

Years later, when I began exploring spirituality and religion outside my family’s traditions, I attended my first Easter morning sunrise service. I drove in the pre-dawn darkness and shivered in the early morning chill as the sun began to rise over the outdoor service. Despite the minor discomfort, I remember the awe and excitement I felt imagining the scene outside Jesus’ tomb all those centuries ago. It was powerful and humbling and made the Easter story come alive for me.

After still more years of spiritual searching and interest in metaphysical thought, I discovered Unity. I learned about the Divine within and began to see myself as a spiritual being. This understanding changed me in a deep and lasting way and transformed my relationship with the Bible. I learned how to see my life’s story reflected in its pages, developing a new way of seeing myself and life. I was able to appreciate Bible stories as having happened to people in faraway lands centuries ago, but I could also see myself in the stories. This realization gave me comfort as I discovered my struggles weren’t as unique as they sometimes felt and helped me discern the presence of God in all things.

This learning was particularly potent as I discovered the Easter story anew. Like most people, I have had to contend with endings that were profound, unwelcome, and unexpected. Seeing myself in the Easter story helped me reframe those experiences and see them through a spiritual lens. I learned to trust the process of life and the presence of God and allow myself to relax into the unknowable future.

Now as Easter draws near, the days lengthen, and the air feels full of the promise of spring, I carry all these memories of past Easter seasons with me. I am still that happy kid dyeing eggs and eating chocolate and the nascent spiritual seeker standing outdoors in the early-morning chill. I am still the person who was laid low by endings that changed my life in devastating ways, and I remain the spiritual seeker who transcended those endings to gather the strength to begin again.

This year as the Lenten season draws to a close and it’s time to welcome Easter again, I invite you to revisit your memories of past Easters and pause to appreciate the ways you’ve grown and all that you’ve survived, overcome, and grown through.

Easter can be a fun and joyous celebration. It can be an opportunity to be newly humbled by Jesus’ demonstration of faith and forgiveness and to be awestruck by the resurrection. And it can be a powerful reminder to see your life’s journey—your endings and beginnings—in the Easter story.

However you celebrate this holy season, I pray you take the blessings of Easter into your heart and trust in the promise of new beginnings. Happy Easter.

This was a Daily Word editor’s letter. To subscribe to Daily Word, please visit https://shop.unityonline.org/subscribe.