.

In the first moment of the womens’ encounter with the risen Jesus, and in the following hours when others, first curious then convinced also came to know that the tomb was empty and he had risen, the news was new, fresh and convincing.

“Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples.”

Within hours of the Sunday morning Resurrection event, and certainly by the Monday, the rumour mill of stories began to circulate taking the power from the fact: surely his followers have hidden the body?

In an Easter newspaper column over the Easter weekend one writer concluded that they were perhaps too far gone for God to be bothered.

We forget that every chapter of the four Gospel accounts tell of Jesus bypassing and even ignoring those who were good and the ready and making a bee-line for the people widely considered to be undeserving and outcast.

Today’s First Reading tells of Peter boldly in one of the first Christian homilies boldly preaching “

You killed him, but God raised him to life.”

Just a month earlier Peter had been the one who denied knowing Jesus, right when Jesus needed some one, any one, to stand for him and with him. But in that moment Peter didn’t have that kind of courage and conviction was ahead of him.

The other disciples of Jesus, his closest friends had been similarly hopeless through those Holy Week Days.

But now Jesus showed how things were different. But it takes an encounter, a moment, a shift, a nudge, an experience, a wake-up for the fact to fuse with the being of each person.

The fact that I don’t feel the fusion, Jesus and I being ONE, is not to be confused with the fact that Jesus is extending his hand to me in every moment…

…in every joy

…in every hope

…in every grief

…in every anxiety.

Perhaps as you read an experience comes to mind?

Share it in the comments section below – or send me one experience of Jesus for inclusion in the second volume of Fifth Gospel Living. (see below).

An invitation to take this week,
the Easter Octave,
as an opportunity to experience
the risen Jesus with you
in every hour.

Set five minutes
twice a day
for the next eight days.
Diary these appointments with Jesus
and make these encounters
your priority this Easter Week.

Thanks to Suzi de Gouveia from Christchurch for sharing her Easter image above.