The Quiet of a Resurrection Morning

 Has it ever struck you, how Easter comes so quietly, unlike Christmas that comes with angels singing and Magi entering in a grand procession?

Easter is different. The sounds of a Resurrection morning are quiet. They are muffled sounds of a woman at dawn, the sound of sandals on the gravel road, of hushed disciples in a locked room. There is a distraught Mary standing near the grave in tears, hearing her name whispered “Mary”!

I like the quiet of a Resurrection Morning. A morning that begins in the dark. “Early on the first day the week, while it was still dark…” John 20:1

Dear ones, let us learn from this! When our prayers seem to go unheard. When hope seems lost and darkness fills our minds and hearts, this is where we need Easter and the quiet of a Resurrection Morning.

“While it was still dark.”  Where is it dark for you? When is it difficult to even get up to begin a new day?

On that Friday when Jesus died and darkness covered the land, it must have seemed to those watching that all was lost. Yet, the women followed as they carried the body of Jesus to his burial. The women stood at a distance, taking note of where they laid the corpse of the one they loved. They did not flee. They stayed by His lifeless side. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. Among those spices would have been Myrrh, a gift once fit for a child in Bethlehem and now fit for a corpse.

It seems so small, so ordinary. But in their sorrow, they simply did what they could. They obeyed the Sabbath command, by waiting and resting. How they must have longed to do something. The Sabbath, however, was to be a day for singing the Psalms and giving thanks to God for His faithfulness. Yet, on this day, how could they sing, when their faith was shattered and it seemed as though all hope had died with Jesus?

The Sabbath was created to remember how God rescued his people, when we could not help ourselves. The Sabbath was about resting in the Lord’s work through His Messiah. And yet, they had just placed him in a tomb! How could they pause their mourning to honor God who had promised a Messiah who was now dead? Wouldn’t it have felt entirely pointless? Yet, in the sorrow, they were living our His Word. “They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy!” Ps. 126:5 Have you ever experienced that pain of being in church and trying to sing a hymn through tears and wondering what is the point of it all?

When the Sabbath was over, the women returned to the tomb while it was still dark, not in anticipation of an empty grave but rather prepared to express their love one last time for the dead Lord.

“Faithfulness in the dark is often quiet and unseen. Simple, daily obedience. Keeping the Sabbath. Tending to the small and sacred. Preparing for what lies ahead, even when the road is shrouded. In the silence between Friday and Sunday? Between despair and resurrection? Between death and dawn? The women show us the quiet strength of obedience and uncertainty. They were not thinking or looking for resurrection. They were not waiting for an empty tomb. They simply loved Jesus, and so they did the next thing.” (Dan Steel — “Ever Approaching Dawn”)

Sometimes it can feel as if our days are spent in that space between Good Friday and The Quiet of a Resurrection Morning.

Like the women, we are called to remain faithful in the ordinary, trusting that when it feels like Friday, we know that Sunday is coming. When we get up in the morning and dawn is breaking, we know what the women did not know that first morning. The darkness does not have the final word. The grave has lost its grip. As it was with Mary, in the quietness of all our own Resurrection mornings, He calls our name. “Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name, you are mine.” (Is. 43:1)

Pastor Barry Keurulainen