What are the first images that pop into your head when you hear the word Easter? If your mind is spinning with thoughts of chocolate bunnies, blooming lilies and a day off of work, then it might surprise you that one of the things I think about during this season is the movie Braveheart.

Before you suggest a good therapist, allow me to explain. Thinking about Easter fills me with a sort of righteous rage – as if I could take on the devil glove-to-glove and remind him (as I pin him in a headlock), “Guess what? You LOSE!” I imagine being on the battlefield in Braveheart, surrounded by fellow Scottsmen, when William Wallace rallies the masses with his battlecry: “… [T]hey may take our lives, but they’ll never take … OUR FREEDOM!”

What can the enemy take from me when I know that I win, in the end? I cry out like Paul, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (I Corinthians 15:55, Hosea 13:14). Because of Easter, we are victorious in Christ!

“… [W]e are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39).

The tagline for the movie Braveheart reads: “Every man dies; not every man really lives.” What is life, if spent in fear? What is life, apart from the resurrected Christ? Life in Christ is freedom from fear and death. Even William Wallace knew, “It’s all for nothing if you don’t have freedom.” The question, as Paul (via Galatians 5:13) and William Wallace remind us, is, “What will you do with that freedom?”

(Braveheart. Dir. Mel Gibson. Perf. Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan. 1995. Film.)