'Let It Go'

At this year’s Academy Awards the soundtrack single that took first place was “Let It Go,” from the Disney movie “Frozen.”  This is a defiant song of liberation as Queen Elsa no longer holds back her ice-making powers.  She sings of freedom as she builds a spectacular palace of ice with flicks of her wrists.

Some of the lyrics whisper words of resurrection to me: “The fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all.”  And “I’ll rise like the break of dawn.”  

The main message of Easter is resurrection, not only resurrection from bodily death but from death to our souls.  It is quite possible to be brain dead and yet bodily alive due to medical science.  It is equally true that people can be dead spiritually and in need of resurrection through faith in Christ. 

Christ not only brings us life eternal in heaven but spiritual resurrection of our earthly souls and minds while we are here walking on the earth.  Paul writes to the church in Ephesus: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” (2:4-5) Through faith we have the power to be free of sin and the bondage it holds on us.

Like the ice queen in the movie, prior to her liberating change of heart, we sometimes are bound by fear, by guilt, by doubts.  Even those who know the Lord fall back at times into an attitude of worry, having flashbacks to times when we have failed, looking around at friends and comparing ourselves, or casting a judgmental eye on the ministry of others or their theological beliefs.  All of that brings spiritual death, and we so easily allow it to entangle itself around our souls.

Let it go!  Let it go by once again claiming the freedom and deliverance that Christ offers us on a daily basis.  Let it go by giving up the need to “fix” others who disagree with us.  Let it go by living a life of thanksgiving and gratitude for the enormous cache of blessings that God has bestowed on us.   

This Easter as we sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” let us also sing “Let it Go!” And then let us go forth and live resurrected lives in Christ.