As you read this article, Easter Sunday 2021 is less than a month away. Hard to believe.

You don’t need to be reminded of all that has happened since Easter 2020. In light of the challenges and adversity we and our churches have faced this year, I am asking the Lord to pour out His blessings on our churches this Easter Sunday. Would you join me in that prayer? Let’s ask God to move with power as we gather for Easter worship. I have a sense that this will be a Sunday of new beginnings.

On Easter we worship our risen Lord, Jesus. Paul explains the importance of the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:17-19. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Those, then, who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.”

Your faith is not worthless, you are no longer in your sins, your loved ones who have passed have not perished. Hallelujah! He is risen!

April 4 is the day. Pray for your pastor. Prepare your heart. Respect what protocols your church has in place. Invite some family and friends, and if your health allows, gather with your church on Easter 2021 to shout and sing, “Christ the Lord is Risen Indeed!”

Every Easter I think of the testimony Margaret Sangster Phippen shared about her preacher father.

In the mid-1950s, her father, British pastor, W.E. Sangster, began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg. When he went to the doctor, he found that he had an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice fail and his throat become unable to swallow.

Sangster threw himself into his work in British home missions, figuring he could still write and would have even more time for prayer. “Let me stay in the struggle, Lord,” he pleaded. He wrote articles and books, and helped organize prayer cells throughout England. Gradually Sangster’s legs became useless. His voice went completely. But he could still hold a pen, shakily.

On Easter morning, just a few weeks before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter. In it, he said, “It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice to shout, ‘He is risen!’—but it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout.”

I pray that you will shout Hallelujah with your church on Easter Sunday 2021.