“Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, He is risen!”  Luke 24:6

I remember back in my young days in the New Tribes Mission´s “boot camp” in PA that there was a small sticker placed on my bunk bed staring at me in the morning.  It just had the words, “He is risen!”  I guess it was put there by someone as a cheerful reminder to get up as co-risen with Christ though my “flesh” could use some more sleep!

Anyway, we have a gloomy tomb in ourselves.  So don´t you try to find Him there. Nor try to find Him in your surroundings.  There are many dark tombs among the spiritually dead, but He is not there.  He is not be found in dead philosophies either.  A philosopher once came to Talleyrand, the foreign minister of Napoleon, and tried to convince him of his philosophy.  He was turned down with the words, “Jesus died and rose again for His teaching.  Please do you the same, mr. philosopher!”

If He is not among the dead, where is He?   He is risen!  He is seated at the right hand of the Father far above all human power and far above every name in this world, no matter how big that name is.  Eph. 1:20-21.

And as you and I allow His Spirit to direct our attention to the glorified, risen Christ, we find ourselves risen with Him “in the heavenlies” not as an escape from this earth, but on the contrary as empowered with His risen presence when witnessing to our dead surroundings.

So the reality of Easter is not just a matter of a right creed.  It is faith´s identification with the risen Christ.

Clovis, CA, April 1, 2012 – jn