God, make your angels known to us, and with them your voice of hope. It can be easy for us to sanitize the story of your passion, suffering, and death. We can too easily miss the promise and miracle of new life if we do not first face death—your death—square on.
Dear God, speak to us again of your promise: “He is risen. He is risen indeed!” The promise is revealed: Death does not have the last word. In Jesus’ rising, death was not the last word.
“He is not here,” the angel said. He is among the living. That’s you. That’s me. We are the living, and God is here, among us. In baptismal water. In bread and wine. And in the community of saints that surrounds us.
This message is an excerpt from “Amen: Your grief is welcome here” by Catherine Malotky in the April 2021 issue of Gather. Today we remember John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, who died in 407.
Daily Grace has been offering you things to ponder and things to pray about for more than 10 years. For free. Women of the ELCA provides many other free online resources, too—see welca.org/resources. Please support Women of the ELCA at welca.org/give.