As each religious holiday (namely Christmas and Easter) rolls around yearly, we can sometimes find ourselves numbed by the secularised version of the celebration. This secularised version is the version of the holiday designed to make it tolerable and marketable to the masses. It is the version of the holiday that is designed to simply be an excuse to have time off from school or work.

There's nothing wrong with liking chocolate eggs and bunnies. There's nothing heretical about enjoying a vacation. But this custom we have, of turning pivotal moments in history between God and Man into a sellable fancy, is one that is coming at a cost.

Roughly one week prior to the crucifixion of Jesus, after He entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, greeted by the cheering celebration of the crowds, He found His way to the temple. As He walked through the temple court, Jesus saw that a thriving marketplace had sprouted.

You see, the temple was a place where people could come to meet with God and be 'put right' with Him through the shedding of innocent blood, in accordance with the religious law of the time. Where there is demand, the shrewd business man will attempt to supply... at a price, and that's exactly what was happening. Merchants and money lenders had set up stalls in the temple courts to sell to the people doves, lambs, grains and wines - anything that could be offered for sacrifice within the temple.

You could argue that this was good. It was convenient for the people to buy what they needed to, right outside the temple as they walked in. Convenience sometimes encourages attendance and exposure. In the same way, a hollow chocolate egg can conveniently remind me and others, that on the third day after He was crucified, Jesus' tomb was empty. But convenience can lead us down a slippery slope.

These merchants who had established their businesses inside the temple began to monetize something that was supposed to be beyond counting and measuring. Suddenly, a place that was supposed to be filled with people who were meant to come seeking God, became transformed into a place where people haggled over the price of the next sacrificial lamb. The point of the temple became perverted from within it's very courts, all in the name of convenience and turning over a quick dollar.

When Jesus saw the marketplace within the temple, a righteous anger came over Him and He began to overturn the tables and stalls. He quoted scripture as He said “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves’. ” He saw the perversion for what it was, and He cleared it out ASAP. The hearts that were numbed to the practice of buying and selling their sacrifices outside of the temple began to awaken again. People started to come back through the temple seeking God Himself and not a bargain - and the person they found was Jesus. Jesus proceeded to spend time with them and heal them while the children worshipped Him. You can find this story in Matthew chapter 21 and read it for yourself.

So what's the point of all this? Should we boycott all chocolate at Easter? Should we go to the supermarket and up-end all their easter stalls? Or should we burn an effigy of the Easter Bunny while singing hymns? Absolutely not! Enjoy the holiday and let others enjoy it too. But what we should do is remember and be advocates for The Truth. We should make sure that we haven't become numb. We should go into the holiday seeking God and not the shopping experience.

We should remind ourselves, and tell others about the incredible and scandalous love story between the Creator of The Universe and humanity. A love story that reaches it's climax on a good Friday on top of a hill called 'Skull', where a man who was God hung from a tree as He bled and died for my sins. Three days later he rose to life again, conquering death once and for all, and proving that His sacrifice was sufficient for all people in all the world - past, present and future.

Once people know this Truth, Easter won't just become another holiday or an excuse to get time off; chocolate and bunnies will be the last thing anyone cares about, and we will never want to be numb again.