Easter Devotional

“Mom, look what Max can do.” My son yelled to me from the living room. “Mom, come see.”

Dropping the apron I’d been wearing while I fixed supper, I walked into the living room to see what he wanted. “What?”

“Watch this.” He pointed at Max, finger extended, hand curled like a pistol. “Bang.”

Max immediately fell to the floor and lay there as if dead, only hopping up when my son told him he could. Laughing, I wiped the tears from eyes and gasped for air. “How did you teach him to do that?”

“I just kept making him lay down until he got it.”

We laughed so hard, it stirred Max to a frenzy. He ran around the room barking, as if to say how proud he was of his cleverness.

Later, I thought about Max’s little trick. With Easter only two days away, I couldn’t help but remember how skeptics accused Jesus of playing dead.

“He was not truly resurrected,” critics said, “only resuscitated.”

Now, I’m no Hollywood actress, but I’ve done my bit on stage, and even I realize how difficult it would be for someone to play dead for not one day, but three! And in front of the entire Roman army, no less—men well acquainted with death and all of it’s indications. Could it be that people who refuse to believe in the reality of the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection do so because their own sinfulness makes it impossible for them to accept such a selfless act of love?

Luke 24:1-12 (New International Version, ©2010)

Jesus Has Risen

1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.

9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.