Easter Sunday

BY Amanda Bible Williams

Scripture Reading: Luke 24:1-49, Psalm 16:9-11

“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” 

The angels posed the question to the women who’d come to visit the tomb, burial spices in hand and heaviness in their hearts. But I look over my shoulder as I read the words, certain they’re also directed at me. 

For a moment, I forget the rest of the story and wonder: Aren’t I the one who looks for life from those who can’t possibly provide it for me? Looks for salvation in what cannot save? Looks for meaning in fountains that only go so deep? It seems that so much of our lives are spent looking for, well, life. 

It’s been this way since the garden. As soon as the serpent’s lie took hold, we started looking for life in everything and everyone but the God who gives it. It’s a fruitless search, a road bound to end in destruction and despair. But—praise be to Christ!—the story doesn’t end there. 

“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” asked the men. “He is not here, but he has risen!” —Luke 24:5–6

The women peered inside the tomb to see. Empty. He was risen indeed. 

They ran to tell the others. Everything He’d taught them, everything the prophets had foretold, everything their Lord had promised—it was all true. The Son of God had died, was buried, and then rose to life once again, defeating sin and death once and for all. No longer must we spend our lives searching, striving, trying in vain to secure our own salvation. The life giver had come to walk the road with us and for us. He came to become our way back to Him. 

On this Resurrection Sunday, we celebrate that our Savior is as alive today as He was the day He stood before His disciples, saying, “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself! Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have” (v. 39). 

Our God is not an abstract concept, an impotent idol, a false and faraway deity. Jesus Christ is the risen and living Messiah, born to set us free through His life, His death, and His resurrection. Our hope is not a ghost—He is flesh and bone, glorified forever and sitting at the right hand of God the Father, where He reigns as King forever and ever. 

Jesus is risen! He is risen indeed. 

Written by Amanda Bible Williams

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