The Empty Tomb

This week I was having a conversation with one of my friends who is experiencing homelessness. He was struggling to fight back tears when he said this, “Y’know, Pastor Vicky, I know I need to come to church more because when I don’t have Christ in my life, I feel like an empty tomb.” Do you ever feel this way?

Why then on Easter morning will churches all over the world celebrate an empty tomb? There will be trumpets blasting and screams of, “Alleluia, Christ has risen!” It is because THIS empty tomb reveals the beautiful promise that Jesus makes to us. When Christ emerges from his tomb, he reminds us not to be afraid. He reminds us that He is always with us and that not even death can separate us from Him. It is this act that reminds us of what Jesus said in Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible!” When we are feeling utterly hopeless, God enters into our pain and our nothingness to create something far greater than we could have ever imagined. We too can emerge from our empty tombs in the same way as Jesus did on Easter!

The resurrection of our Lord is what gives us hope. Throughout this lifetime, we will each experience our own personal Easters, time and time again. We will have our Good Fridays to put things in our life to death…perhaps an abusive relationship, an addiction, crippling grief, a dream that we have, or any other pain and struggle we battle. And then when we trust in God and in the promise of Jesus’s faithfulness, our empty tomb becomes a place where Christ meets us and breathes new life into us.

My friend realized that the solution to his emptiness could only come from one source, his Lord and Savior. How are you inviting Jesus into your empty tomb this Easter? I pray that you let go of your pain, hang it on the cross to die, and then prepare as the Holy Spirit engulfs you in your empty tomb. Then look out, that is ONLY the beginning!

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. – Ephesians 3:20

Happy Easter to you! May God bless you always.