Living on the Front Side of Resurrection Sunday
- Sherry Coyle
- 8 hours ago
- 2 min read
I woke up one Saturday morning thinking about the disciples, thinking about how they must have felt the morning after their Lord’s crucifixion.
I can only imagine that on the morning between His death and resurrection, Jesus’ followers must have awoken to an utterly consuming fog of bewilderment, a weighty hopelessness that filtered their perspective.
Though Jesus had spoken to His disciples of His impending suffering and death, they never fully grasped all that He said, and the experiential realization of it surely rocked them to their core. Christ had been their life, their hope, their purpose, and their joy; but in the blackest night of Gethsemane’s Garden, everything they had been hoping in and living for began to unravel. And when it was all said and done, darkness and death had won.
Or.... so it seemed on the backside of Resurrection Sunday.
Has anything painfully shocking ever happened in your life? Something that rocked you to your core? A moment or a season when all of a sudden life turned to death? When what was once alive and glorious was replaced with a grave? Maybe it came out of nowhere, or perhaps there were subtle (or even not so subtle) harbingers of its arrival. Regardless, the harsh reality of it hit you with magnum force, knocking the breath right out of you.
It has in mine.
In my experience, it was in the deafening silence of the mornings after that hopelessness vied to take up permanent residence. Questions began to swirl and twirl, and what-ifs, one right after another, lined themselves up, impatiently waiting their turn for an audience of one. It was in this deafening silence that cacophonous mental reflections of what I thought should happen... had prayed fervently would happen... competed for control of my consumed, confused mind. And in the days that followed, fears, doubts, regrets, and bitterness battled for domination.
So that particular Saturday morning, as I lay in bed thinking about the disciples on the morning between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday and imagining how despondent and disillusioned they must have felt, I could very much relate. However, instead of allowing myself to keep dwelling on the fact that I could understand what they must have been feeling, I found myself choosing to be thankful.
Thankful that because of Christ and all He endured and accomplished for my sake, I can experience hope and life, glory and resurrection, yes, even after life's disappointments and death's despairing realities, try to dishearten me permanently.
Thankful that this temporary life, with its highest of highs and lowest of lows, is just not it. It’s not! Something more awaits me. Something my puny, finite imaginings can’t even begin to conceive sufficiently, though God’s precious Word gives me glimpses—the most glorious glimpses—of it.
Thankful, so very thankful, that I am living on the front side of Resurrection Sunday.
I sincerely pray that you're living there too.
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