It will soon be tax time. Right now, people all across the nation are preparing their tax returns for filing with the IRS on or before April 15. Some are using TurboTax™, others are using H&R Block or their personal CPA, and some brave souls are doing it themselves with just a calculator. No matter how your tax returns are prepared, you have to mail them no later than April 15. Perhaps you took too many deductions and you will have to write out a big check to Uncle Sam. Or perhaps you took too few deductions and gave Uncle Sam a tax free loan for a few months, but now you will receive a nice refund. It's not much fun for the tax payer, but it is payday for the tens of thousands of accountants across the nation who are burning the midnight oil to get those tax returns prepared.
Of course, you can't be a good accountant unless you are a detail person who is able to handle numbers easily. A business accountant has to reconcile all financial statements. When you add up all the revenues received and deduct all the expenditures, the sum you come up with must equal the amount of cash on hand. When it does it is said that the financial statement has been reconciled.
Of course, the reconciliation process is critical. It verifies the fact the books are balanced. It means that everything is accounted for. Accountants provide a vital service to businesses all across the nation. Without them, businesses would not know where they stand and would not be able to make good decisions.
But the greatest reconciliation process of all was the plan that God created to bring us to Him. Our first earthly father, Adam, sinned. That sin separated us from God, our creator. Sin is incompatible with the perfection of God. It is also incompatible with anything good because God is the source of all goodness.
So while completing financial reconciliations for stock holders is very important, the reconciliation that God accomplished on the first Easter is the greatest reconciliation of all.
You and I are sinners, as are every man and women ever born. No matter how much we try to do good, we fail. There are no good people, no men or women who were not cursed by sin. As it says in Isaiah 59:12, "Our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us. Our offenses are ever with us, and we acknowledge our iniquities." Our sin estranged us from God. It separated us from God so that we could not approach him and could not pass from this life to be with Him in heaven. We were condemned to eternal separation from God, from everything beautiful, perfect, and good.
But God, in his mercy, loved us so much he created a special plan for our reconciliation. It was a painful plan. God the Father, sent his only son, Jesus, to live the perfect life we cannot live, and then to give up that life on the cross as payment for our sins so that we could be reconciled to Him. What a price God paid just to reconcile us to Him so that we can pass through the portal of death into the next life where there will be no sin, only joy and happiness.
That's what the Bible teaches and that's what I believe. That's why Easter is my most favorite day of the year. Easter is the greatest celebration day of the year. It celebrates the most important event in history—Jesus' triumph over death. Easter is reconciliation day for every person ever born. Through Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection, God's plan of reconciliation is complete.
I hope that you, too, have a wonderful Easter celebration, a celebration that brings joy, confidence and happiness to you.
Happy Reconciliation Day!
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