For your Easter Weekend

"Father, Your heart seized shut, hanging there on the cross. You faced him who slithered sin into the beginning, satan. And crushed his head. Price paid. Sacrifice made. It is finished-our debt, our bondage, our estrangement. So You rise! You hold the keys of life and death!

It's Resurrection Sunday, Lord. But isn't every Sunday, always, a celebration of this. You commanding light to shatter the darkness? Our wonder, our gratitude, our awe draws us to celebrate this, the linchpin event of history, every seven days, over and over again. You have made us perpetually the people of the Resurrection, touching Your wounds, feeling for You... and declaring, "He is alive."

So give us courage to run, Father, great joy coursing through these veins, to tell the world! We, the Resurrection people, call the world to come see You! You who breathe before us, Who come out to meet us. We fall at Your feet and worship a risen, living, embracing God, a Saviour who lives forever with our names etched, scars, on the palm of Your hands."

~ Ann Voskamp, An Easter Devotional: Trail to the Tree

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“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." ~ John 11:25-26

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"So be it, O Lord; be with us unto the end; guide and strengthen us in life, and bring us safely through the valley of the shadow of death, to thy blessed presence, where is the fullness of joy forevermore!" ~ Matthew 28:20, Pulpit Commentary

This Easter, "I pray that the love of God is resurrected, reborn and renewed inside your heart."