HIGHLIGHT 

Luke 24:1–8 

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! — Luke 24:5–6” 

EXPLAIN 

They came to anoint a body and found an empty tomb. The women who arrived first on Easter morning did not come expecting resurrection, but came expecting death, bringing spices for a corpse. And the angel’s question rings across two thousand years with the same gentle astonishment: ‘Why are you looking for the living among the dead?’ The resurrection is not merely a miracle among miracles. It is the event that redefines everything. Death has been answered. Sin has been defeated. The grave has been exposed as the temporary thing it always was. Paul will later write that if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, but Christ HAS been raised. And that changes everything. Not just eternal destiny, but how you live this week, how you face this grief, how you treat this enemy, how you endure this diagnosis. 

APPLY 

The resurrection is not the happy ending that makes the story bearable. It is the beginning of a new world order. Because He lives, we live differently…not in fear, not in despair, not as people grasping for significance or numbing pain. We are resurrection people, called to live in the reality of what Easter actually accomplished. Not a holiday. A new creation. 

RESPOND 

• The disciples did not recognize the risen Jesus at first on the road to Emmaus, at the tomb, on the shore. Where have you been slow to recognize the risen Christ in your own story? 

• What ‘dead thing’ in your life have you been treating as permanent that the resurrection has something to say about? 

• Paul says the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you (Romans 8:11). What would it look like to live from that reality this week? 

• How does the resurrection change the way you face the hardest thing in your life right now? 

REFLECTION & PRAYER 

Begin this time by sitting quietly for two minutes. After sitting quietly, do the following: 

• Begin by declaring out loud: ‘He is risen.’ Let it be more than liturgy…mean it. 

• Ask God to show you one ‘dead thing’ in your life: a relationship, a dream, a hope that the resurrection has something to say about. 

• Pray for one person who needs to hear the Gospel today. Ask God for the courage and the words to have that conversation. 

• Finish by praying the following: “Risen Lord You are alive. I say it, and I want to mean it with everything I have. Let this Easter not simply be a Sunday I participate in but a reality I am changed by. Let me follow you as the Lord of my life. Amen.”