“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who lives in you.  So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (By Paul  in his letter to the Romans, chapter 8 verses 11-14).

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“Resurrection is the biggest thing about Jesus. It is also the biggest thing about us. The very same Spirit who raised Jesus from the tomb raises us from a dead life. [In Romans 8: 11-14], Paul works every variation he can come up with to get us to understand, and to get it deep into our imaginations, that the same resurrection miracle that brought Jesus alive, brings us alive. Resurrection is the most unnoticed and under appreciated miracle that takes place in our common lives. But, of course, that’s the way it also was with Jesus, hardly noticed at the time, and certainly by nobody in authority or of  “importance” (By Richard Foster in A Year with God, Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines).

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“Anxiety and fear are what we know best in this fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars.  From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins.  We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it.

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.  In the end, his will, not ours is done.  Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives live through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen” (By Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life, published in 1992).

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“How can you mistake the risen Son of God for a gardener?  Quite easily – if tears do not turn into triumphant faith. Belief in the Resurrection is the best handkerchief I know! Mary was mourning her Christ, her Saviour, the One who had cast out the demons that had tormented her. Beside herself with grief, she shed her necessary tears. But there came a moment when a question needed to be asked: “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you seeking?”

Faith realizes that Christ is alive!  Then who can cry?  Are you in shock? In mourning? Can you not see the Christ presenting Himself to you as the answer, even to death?  Can you hear His voice calling your name? . . . Mary’s tears stopped her from seeing her Saviour. Let faith dry your eyes, look up, look around – then look ahead” (By Jill Briscoe in Wings, A Daily Devotional).

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“The earliest reference to the Resurrection is Saint Paul’s and he makes no mention of an empty tomb at all. But the fact of the matter is that in a way it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since” (By Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life).

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“As people of faith, we need to remember that the resurrection tosses out all standard expectations and measurements of failure and success. Neither failure nor success is good or evil; both can result in growth, stagnation, or regression. In our struggle with failure and success, we may find a hidden strength as we commend our spirits to our Creator and seek to yield our lives to love. Our challenge is to have faith—in failure, in success, in whatever life brings. The unexpected turns, the painful endings, the precarious beginnings are all part of the path of faith, where we are reminded with each step that the resurrection did not happen only once long ago—it happens each day of our lives” (By Jean M. Blomquist in “On Having Faith in Failure,” Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, Vol. VII, No. 1 (Jan/Feb 1992), Nashville, TN: The Upper Room,1992), 14-15.