The Day After Easter

I hope your Easter celebration was a joyous one. There is nothing more important than remembering what Christ did for us on the cross. And then remembering that Jesus has kept the most remarkable of all His promises - He would rise again. If He can keep this promise, what promise is too difficult?

Did you enjoy a joyous Easter? Or was it just another day to do the "same 'ol same 'ol." I know for me it is easy to miss out on the real joy because it can become a mere tradition.

But what was the day after Easter like for the eleven disciples? Do you think they experienced real joy? I think they did, because for them the resurrection was always a future event, not a past reality.

In his excellent Lenten devotional, Reliving the Passion, Walter Wangerin reminds us of the difference between the disciples and us. He says,

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. ... It is the experience of genuine grief that prepares us for joy. You see? The disciples approached the Resurrection from their bereavement. For them the death was first, and the death was all. Easter, then, was an explosion of Newness, a marvelous splitting of heaven indeed. But for us, who return backward into the past, the Resurrection comes first, and through it we view death which is, therefore, less consuming, less horrible, even less real. We miss the disciples' terrible, wonderful preparation."

Take a few minutes this morning to think about what it must have been like to be a disciple on the day after Easter. Has the reality of the Resurrection changed you like it did the disciples? Can it?

Scripture: I Corinthians 15: 13, 14 - "But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain."

Action Point: Take a few minutes to pretend you are one of Jesus' disciples getting up the day after Easter. What are you feeling, thinking, and planning on doing?

Return to Ministry Minutes Index

Email this to a friend