Hope is something our world lacks more with each passing year. Natural disasters and catastrophes sweep in without a moment’s warning and shake our normal. Emptiness hides behind fake facades that only emerge when desperation results in the irreversible. Even as believers, we inevitably face these things. Recently, a Christian friend of mine—a twenty-year-old young woman—lost her life in a devastating car accident. Our town has also been shaken by several teen suicides within months.
In light of this, celebrating anything feels hollow. Brittle.
But in Easter, there is hope.
Not in this life, which will doubtless continue to be infused with raw tragedies, but in a future one. When we live with hearts fixed on eternity, not denying present challenges, but denying the world’s status quo—that the present is the sum of all parts—we find hope.
Such a hope enabled Dietrich Bonhoeffer to withstand insurmountable circumstances during a horrific time in history. A German pastor during WWII, Dietrich determined to do his part to aid the downfall of Adolf Hitler. Working as a double agent on behalf of the resistance, his activities soon came under suspicion. Taken into custody and interrogated, he spent eighteen months in a Berlin military prison. In spite of his circumstances, he continued to hold out hope that once the Nazi regime was overthrown he’d be released. He encouraged fellow prisoners, worked on a book, and wrote letters to his family and fiancée.
Then came July 20th 1944. Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on Hitler ended in failure. After discovering the plots against him, Hitler ordered the extermination of all conspirators. When Dietrich heard this news, he knew he’d likely share their fate. Execution.
Instead of lapsing into despair, as many would be tempted to do, Dietrich lived out his final months fearless, faithful, and caring for others. On the morning of April 9, 1945, Dietrich’s life ended at Flossenbürg concentration camp. The day before, he passed on a final message to a fellow prisoner, “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.”
This is the hope we celebrate at Easter. Because Jesus Christ shed His blood on the cross, suffering excruciating separation from His Father, we have an eternal future with Him in heaven. It means my friend is now with God Himself in a realm too glorious for the human mind to comprehend. It means, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer so poignantly stated, that the end of a Christian’s earthly life is really the beginning of a new, better, greater life.
In the midst of losses and challenges, I’m celebrating Easter with joy in my heart. Christ is victor over the grave. He is triumphant over everything we face in this life, not because He fixes it all, but because He promises us something better—eternity with Him.
Indeed, He is Risen.
Amanda Barratt is the ECPA best-selling author of the upcoming novel My Dearest Dietrich: A Novel of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Lost Love, releasing from Kregel Publications in June 2019. Connect with her on Facebook and visit her at www.amandabarratt.net.
