Hope is believing. Resurrection is proof.

And very early on the first day of the week,
when the sun had risen,
they went to the tomb.
Mark 16:2

Hope is believing that things will get better.
    Resurrection is proof.

I had prayed for no rain on Easter morning. We had places to go that needed dry. No Easter egg hunt for these girls. As teenagers, their hunts are different.

This hunt would be different.

We loaded them in cars by 9:15 a.m. They trusted us to take them somewhere good.

We ended up at the cemetery.

It was fitting, right? All semester we’ve been studying women in the Bible following Jesus. Learning how Jesus touched lives. Then. And now.

On Easter morning, where did the women follow Jesus?
To the tomb.

So as women following Jesus, we ended up there too.
Go to the tomb.

As we sat on blankets, surrounded by tombstones, we looked around. At apparent deadness. But we knew better. Life lay just beyond our vision.

• We broke bread. One girl at a time cracked opened her story of death to life, sharing a memory from her day of rebirth—her own resurrection. Then tore off a piece of His symbolic body, taking into her physical body the reminder of Bread that never dies.
• We drank fruit of the vine. And prayed. We remembered the Blood that poured out three days earlier, and coursed through veins again on Resurrection Sunday.
• We sang praise. For the glory of the risen King. At least one man sat in his car in the cemetery and listened—to young girls singing about finding hope in Christ alone, their light, strength, song.

Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave he rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine -
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

My God is mighty to save
...He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

We gathered the girls back into cars and returned to the church building.

Another Sunday class over.
But another lesson continuing in following Jesus wherever He goes.

Hunt for Jesus. He wants to be found.
To breathe life into the dead.
It’s our message to tell: “I have seen the Lord.”

Because hope is believing that things will get better.
    And resurrection is proof.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord”—
and that he had said these things to her.
John 20:18

* * *

Have you seen Resurrection lately, too?

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26