The Day After the Resurrection

“He is risen.” “He is risen indeed.”

If you were in church yesterday, there’s a 90% chance that there was an exchange of those words. Indeed, Jesus is risen. Easter is so beautiful; we should preach the gospel to ourselves every single day, but it’s wonderful to have an entire set apart day to remember and rejoice.

Yes, our living Savior and his blood that cleanses us is an amazing, awesome thing. We should walk in remembrance and celebration of this great grace and mercy. Yet, once we finish with Easter, where do we go? What do we do?

Too frequently, people walk with Jesus and rejoice in him for only the single day the holiday falls on, and then they return to what they know. They leave Jesus behind, waiting to think about him until next year.

I think the Disciples struggled with what to do and how to live in light of Jesus being once more alive. He came to them, they felt the holes in his hand, his side. They knew he was alive, and this should have caused them to follow after Jesus relentlessly and unswerving, ecstatic that their Savior was alive. After all, he had been dead and broken, and they had been hurting; what power it takes to defeat death!

However, that isn’t what all the Disciples did. Instead, they returned to their former life, what they once knew. They went fishing.

John 21:2-3 tells us this:

“Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. ‘I’m going out to fish,’ Simon Peter told them, and they said, ‘We’ll go with you.’ So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.”

In our brains, we might be screaming, “HOW COULD THEY GO FISHING AT A TIME LIKE THIS?! THEY KNOW JESUS IS ALIVE AND IS MOVING AND WORKING AMONG THEM.”

Yet, we do the EXACT SAME THING. We celebrate on Sunday, forget by Monday. We rejoice and share Bible verses and sit in a church pew on Easter, and return to a godless life (or one with just enough of God to suit us) by the next day.

We spent yesterday celebrating the fact that Jesus is ALIVE, and because of him, we can be too. Folks, you can’t isolate and allocate that beautiful news to one day. It’s life changing, heart wrenching, and it demands a change. You either decide to follow Jesus, or you don’t. You follow him forever and ever, or you leave thoughts of him for Easter.

You get to choose.

There is a God who loves you so much that he calls you his adopted child, his friend, the bride of his Son. And, once you know the truth that sets mankind free, you’re forced to do something about it, because the proper response is nothing less than changing your life so that you can pursue Jesus with everything.

Jesus found those fishing followers, made them breakfast, and then reminded them that they were called to follow him. Where would he have found you the day after the resurrection?

Where will he find you today?

(PC: Milo Winter)