“He is not here; he has risen,
just as he said”
(Matthew 28:5-6)
Reflection:
Whatever else the empty tomb may say to us one more message rings out – “Life should never be the same again.”
Jesus Christ died upon the cross to reveal the full extent of the love of God as He provided for the forgiveness of our sins. Now He has risen again to introduce and extend to us eternal life as the daughters and sons of the Almighty Father.
He revealed some of His power and authority during His ministry. Now He has demonstrated that they extend over life and death and all eternity. And He calls us to rise from the darkness of our old lives into the light of our new lives with Him and to journey with Him into this life and new way of living.
“Jesus rolled the stone away so that the disciples, you and I, could enter and face our deepest fears, our disordered histories, our shameful pasts, and all the things that hold us in bondage and which disempower us and render us dysfunctional. When we enter our own everyday tombs, we are faced with a God who has emptied them of the power that holds us in those places. We are faced with a God who sees beyond the tomb to what we can become.” (Archbishop Thabo Makgoba)
And although He will always meet us in the tomb He calls us to come to Him outside in the garden – where He brings us back into the garden of the presence of God from which we were expelled so many years ago.
He calls out to us to join Him, to engage in a different narrative – to move on from our old life histories and to join Him in the new story of His eternal life.
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the old has gone, the new has come!”
(2 Corinthians 5:17)
Response:
“Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Romans 13:14)
Prayer:
Yours Lord is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Soaring Eagle 