Easter Monday

The day after the biggest event in Christianity...How are you spending it?  There's always the annual Easter egg roll on the White House lawn and this year, the Boston Marathon and Aggie Muster, and Dyngus Day celebrations filled with water soakings and polkas.
My Easter Monday begins quietly, packing up Easter bunnies and plastic eggs, but I pause to ask myself if I'm still unpacking the Good News? Am I living like an Easter person who has been saved by a radical life, a radical death, a radical resurrection or am I packing up Grace as well?
Even the disciples returned to their status quo: Peter went fishing, two of them walked home toward Emmaus.  But not for long! Their lives were about to be forever changed. The two would return to Jerusalem and wage a communication campaign about the Risen Lord, Peter and the other ten would pack their bags and preach, teach and feed the nations, and countless others would lose their lives in exchange for abundant Life. 
Radical living... the early days after and even today.
I've been studying the work of Little Changes International, a local ministry that feeds and disciples some the poorest children on our planet, and I'm moved by the example of seven young people, the Little Changes International's Board of Directors.  They are busy people, holding down full time jobs, caring for their babies, completing advanced degrees, but they still find time to live in a radical way for Jesus. They devote hours to this ministry and receive no pay, no perks. In fact, many months they plunge into their personal savings to ensure the safety of six young girls, protecting them from being  re-trafficked onto the streets of Cambodia.

 Why? Because they take Jesus' charge to Peter,  feed my sheep, as their own. David Platt writes in his book, Radical, "The mark of Christ followers is that their hearts are in heaven and their treasures are spent there." These seven live out this powerful quote!  
So on this Easter Monday, I ask myself once again: Am I closing the pages of the Resurrection Story until this time next year or am I living like one changed by it? Will I feed his sheep, will I spread His Story beyond my borders?  Jim Elliot, the beloved martyr who served in Ecuador in the fifties, once said " He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." and 
 " Wherever you are, be all there."
Some radical advice for some radical living!