Outside the tomb

If asked to name the biggest events in my life, I would probably be able to count them on one hand. Finishing college and graduate school. Being ordained. Getting married. Everything felt as if it would surely be huge and different forever.

Except that after every one of these big life events, the next morning I woke up in the same room as the day before. Another day passed, and for anyone looking at me from the outside, everything looked pretty similar to the day before. And yet it wasn’t. Something had changed in the deepest part of my heart.

Likewise, everything is transformed by resurrection. Death no longer has the last word. Fear no longer keeps us bound. Freedom, love, mercy, and grace win the day. There are plenty of days after Easter morning when the brightness of resurrection morning seems pretty far way.

But God’s love calls us out of these stuck places. Because of the resurrection, we are a people of dreams, people who worship a living savior who calls us to places we cannot imagine by paths that are yet unseen. Because of the gift of God we are a new people, a visionary people. We are forever changed—even if no one can see it.

This message was adapted from “Outside the Tomb” by Brooke Petersen that first appeared in the April 2011 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine. Today we remember Albrecht Dürer, who died in 1528; Matthias Grünewald, who died in 1529; Lucas Cranach, who died in 1553; artists.

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