I was reading from the book Jesus Is… by Judah Smith the other day about a most-anticipated, yet unfulfilling Easter tradition – the hollow chocolate Easter bunny. Just when you think this will be  THE year for the fully loaded version, you take a bite and there it is again…a hollow ear. It caused me to think about those times in my life when my faith wasn’t a whole lot more than a hollow chocolate Easter bunny – mostly appealing but with little substance.

I would suspect that I have not been alone in those thoughts. Either we were the bunny, or we placed a lot of our trust in someone who turned out to be that bunny. Of course, enough years of the hollow chocolate Easter bunny experience and before long, we just accept the less than fulfilling reality of an increasingly thinner surface with a lot of nothing inside. Not so good, huh? But there is good news!

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about how the resurrection of Jesus Christ takes the hollowness out of faith, replacing it with hope. He said,

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins….But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. (1 Corinthians 15:17, 20)

The resurrection of Jesus keeps faith from being futile and tells us we don’t have to be satisfied with a hollow chocolate Easter bunny kind of faith. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! And Christ’s resurrection tells us our faith can rise from hollowness and disappointment, for the risen Christ has come to give us life in its fullness.