They came to the tomb at the rising of the sun.—Mark 16: 2.
When they came to the tomb they found a surprising thing—the tomb was empty!
A spring sunrise. Resurrection and new life—the Easter message.
We need the Easter message in winter as much as in the spring, if not more. In the spring we see all nature bursting forth into new life. The resurrection of life in nature helps us to believe in the resurrection of human life.
It is different in winter, the trees stripped of their leaves, bleakness and barrenness everywhere, nothing to suggest resurrection and new life.
Our loved ones pass away in wintry weather. We take them on a cold winter day and lay them in a cold grave. Our bodies are chilled—and our hearts. We are left stunned, broken-hearted, with an empty, lonely feeling.
We return home, and wander aimlessly in the broken household. Out of the depths of our heart we cry with Job, “If a man die, shall he live again?” Then, like the sun breaking through the clouds and lighting up a dark winter day, comes that hope-inspiring declaration of Christ: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die” (John 11: 25-26).
After Christ was buried in the tomb, the last word was death. After Easter, the last word is life. Life—not death. Not annihilation but everlasting life, not the end of day but daybreak, not the bloom of winter but the gladness of spring, not exit but entrance, entrance into the Father’s house.
Easter changed shame to glory, fear to faith, despair to gladness, sunset to sunrise.
To the penitent man who died by His side on the cross, Christ said, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23; 43). Today!—not in some dim, distant future. They would meet in paradise, which means recognition, means that we shall know each other in heaven—means that you will see again your loved one lost for a while.
