The question came up after the church service last Sunday why Easter is on a different Sunday every year (unlike Christmas which is always December 25). Have you wondered yourself? Here is an answer from “Christian History.” It has additional details we were able to give last week.
“For the first seven centuries after the birth of the church, Christians differed about how to determine the date of Easter. Bishop Amobrose of Milan (c.339-397) commented in a letter that in A.D. 387, Easter was celebrated on March 21 in Gaul (modern France), April 18 in Italy, and April 25 in Egypt. Unity in the Mediterranean world came in the fifth century when the churches all began using the Egyptian method of calculation: Easter was the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.”
Thursday I received a call from the mother of a man who attended the church here for a few years twenty years ago. Michael Moreno died Wednesday night. He was 44 years old. Sunday morning I learned that a funeral had been arranged for Monday evening at 6:00 PM at Allen’s Mortuary. If you read this before Monday evening, I’d appreciate your prayer for that service. If you are reading this after Monday evening, would you also pray as God offers His grace to those who were present?
In our Bible reading, I marveled at Job’s description of God and His greatness in chapter 26 (verse 14 says, “Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, And how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?”). Eugene Peterson paraphrases that verse this way, “And this is only the beginning, a mere whisper of his rule. Whatever would we do if he really raised his voice!”
Job also had an insightful understanding of God’s wisdom. In Job 28:12 and 20, Job asks, “where is wisdom found?” Like the precious metals and jewels of the earth, God’s wisdom doesn’t just sit on the surface but is hidden from ordinary view. Wisdom is worth every effort to search for and find it. Paul personifies wisdom as Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). At the end of the chapter, Job reminds his “consolers” of something God said, “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, And to depart from evil is understanding” (28:28).
Job’s understanding of God was refined and focused through suffering and it was in during great adversity that his view of God’s wisdom was so clearly articulated. The natural response would be to pray for deliverance or at the least, relief. Job had his moments of despair, after all, he was only human, too. But would Job have known God as familiarly if his prayer had been answered?
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