Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-077 Easter Day, 2003

Reading – Matthew 28:1-10 THE WONDER OF IT ALL

‘He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!'(Robert Lowry) Praise him for his resurrection presence this Easter Day.

An educated high-born Hindu was rehabilitated at our mission leprosy hospital. He boasted that even if he was brought back from death to life he would never become a Christian. One night after reading a gospel booklet to a little boy in the hospital, God spoke to him and he accepted Jesus as his Saviour. Soon after he was baptised and changed his name so that today we only know him as Lazarus, the one who was ‘brought back from death to life’!(See John 11:43,44)

The resurrection is like that, it has a way of turning people’s lives and circumstances upside down. Yesterday we tried to imagine how the friends of Jesus were feeling on that sad day when all seemed lost and hopeless, but now look at these women and their circumstances. An empty tomb, a radiant angel, petrified guards, a barely believable announcement that ‘he has risen’ (v 6). All is changed. They were ‘afraid yet filled with joy’ (v 8) and ‘hurried away… and ran to tell his disciples’ (v 8). Imagine women running in the flowing robes of the day; it must have been quite a sight!

‘Suddenly Jesus met them’ (v 9). Their last view was of Joseph lovingly wrapping Jesus’ battered body in a linen shroud and placing it in his own new tomb.(Matt 27:61) But now he is alive, greeting them with the old familiar salutation, encouraging them not to be afraid (v 10) and sending them with a message for ‘my brothers’! From that moment their devotion, their relationships, their purpose for living, their whole world was totally changed.(2 Cor 5:15,17)

Jesus has risen. Life can never be the same again – for the women, for the disciples, and for us!

Worship the risen Lord Jesus today (v 9). As you worship, humbly expect that you and the world about you will be changed!

– Ross Pilkinton

Copyright Scripture Union, 2003, Encounter with God

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