At this time of year, Sydney experiences its highest rainfall totals on average. So it’s no surprise to me that as I’m writing this post I can hear rain falling outside.

I actually rather like the rain and when people complain about how awful it’s been that it’s rained all week, I have to pretend that I’m in agreement with them.

However, I do feel the dystopian vibes with the rain as well.

I really don’t know how people maintain atheism long term. Agnostics I can understand, whilst disagreeing with them. But atheists, how do you survive?

“The existential dread” was a phrase I heard in a sermon recently and for me that sums it up. To face the reality of there actually being nothing out there. No purpose. No meaning. No real reason for anything.

How do you handle that?

When what you thought you were chasing just shrivels up and dies in your hands. You open the door into a void. You’re just left in the silence, alone.

This is atheism. Just you on a planet, spinning.

People claim that atheism is freedom. Hardly. It’s a bleak dystopia, in my opinion.

I know that Easter is a celebration and this post is hardly that. But imagine Good Friday and the followers of Christ, the women, who stood at Golgotha. The Messiah, dead on the cross in front of their eyes.

“The existential dread” of the crucifixion. Is there anything worse?

What they thought was happening. Who they thought was God. Gone. Lost in an instant.

And yet…

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

It can’t end there. Not in the darkness.

God can’t promise one thing and then never deliver.

That’s not who He is. He doesn’t change.

Shifting Shadows are the devil’s work. But sometimes he tries to make it look like the Lord’s doing and that it’s all that God’s got in store for us.

But God is more…

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

It’s not wrong to ask God for more than a bleak dystopia. Sometimes in Christian circles we’re told to just keep out head down. Punch in. Punch out.

That’s not right though.

And this is not a prosperity gospel either.

This is Easter.

Yours enjoying the rain,

Alison