Chris Harrell

Many Christians today, if they keep ‘Lent’ at all, follow it with only a single day of Easter celebration. But the early Christians celebrated Easter as a prolonged festival, running for forty days until the commemoration of Jesus’ Ascension. The present book, ending with a whole week of Easter reflections, is pointing towards that larger reality. Why did they do all this? What did it mean for them? And what might it mean for us to follow the same kind of discipline? Perhaps the most important thing they were doing was to remind themselves, in the weeks either side of Easter, that world history divides into two: the time before Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the time afterwards. New creation has been launched in the midst of the old. -From Wilderness to Glory: Lent and Easter for Everyone