It’s the Monday after Easter and today promises to be a beautiful,  warmer day with temperatures  temporarily in the 60’s. After the  long, snowy winter and months of cloudy skies, I am welcoming a belated spring and overjoyed to see daffodil bulbs emerging alongside the garage wall.  

            It’s Monday morning as  I reluctantly put away the basket of  fragile, painted Easter eggs  some of which date back to the children. My hands were more steady then and I decorated blown out eggs for them. Over time  I’ve collected  and been gifted others, especially  intricate Ukrainian pysanki  eggs. I wonder which of our children will keep up the tradition one day. But now it’s time to put them away for another year.

            Since it’s Monday morning, most of the world will go back to …well, Monday morning and the same old, same old routines. For the   worldly culture Easter  (if  it hasn’t been cancelled yet by the woke Pharisees)   means nothing other than   filling baskets with fake grass and  year old chocolate rabbits.  This Monday is merely  a day on the calendar to mark off and trudge on to the next thing to capture their attention. Been there; done that; move on.

            However, the Monday after Easter is still Easter for Christians! The Resurrection of Christ celebrated for  2,000 years is not a one day extravaganza but an ongoing journey of our faith because Jesus, the living Son of God,  is not in the tomb. His bones are not interred in the earth. His  transformed  body lives on eternally. We may not be able to feel  His heart beating, but surely His love touches us  in very tangible ways.  I can’t audibly hear His blessed voice, but  I surely know when He speaks to me. As He lives, so can we through faith.  He is who He said He was.

            As I reflect today,  on the Fourth Day of Easter, it is not just another Monday because  the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus are imprinted in time over thousands of years. The somber events of Good Friday and the  deathly silence of Saturday leading  to the empty tomb and Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead are the anchor of our Christian faith. As has been  pointed about by C.S. Lewis and others,  if the tomb were  not empty, our faith would be deceptive and evil. If Jesus had not risen from the dead,  His life and death would  reveal  Him to be either insane or a liar.  But Jesus did rise from the dead. The prophecies  about Him as Messiah were fulfilled and it’s important to understand  that Jesus fulfilled His own Word.   On Sunday morning, the angel told the women, “He is risen just as He said.” The Son of God lives.

            It’s the Monday after unending Easters because instead of  death, the rotten fruit of the tomb,  we have  the hope of eternal life suffusing the empty tomb. Jesus gave  us back to the Father through His incomparable, selfless sacrifice on the cross.  How could that cosmic earth shaking sacrifice possibly stop on a Monday morning? Whether it be Monday or Tuesday or any other day yet to come,  Jesus’ Resurrection continues on in us for as it is written,

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you. Romans 8:11

Happy Monday in our Resurrected Lord Jesus!