An Easter Prayer

Sunday April 20 2025

Based on Luke 24:1-12

The cold breaking dawn
Reveals confusing pictures
Stone rolled
Tomb empty
Nothing as expected

LORD, what’s going on?
I don’t understand what’s happening
Still my racing mind
Unnerved by the unscripted

The lightning bright heralds
Thunder interruption:
‘He is not here!
He has risen!
Remember what He said?’

Alarm morphs to shock
LORD, how violent hope arrests us!
Resurrection’s overwhelming
When it’s really there before us
When it’s more than talk and taglines
When it’s not some distant dream
When it’s happening today
I’m so surprisingly unready

But yes…
I do remember…
You told us that you’d do this
Understated promise
Over all our heads:
‘After I die, I’ll live.’

I did not hear it
Because I did not believe it
LORD, let me hear it now!
‘He’s alive!’
‘He has risen!’
LORD, let those words
Sink into my soul
Save me from despair
Inspire me to hope
Engulf me with life

Let us be a Church
Who cannot help but sing
Giddily spilling out
Gushing joy for life reborn

Let us be those who
Declare hope
Declare life
Declare victory
Declare that there is more

Beyond dead ends
Beyond dead wood
Beyond dead dreams
Beyond deadly serious
Beyond all death amidst us
Bring life!

May people call us crazy
When we make outrageous claims
Of a Risen Saviour
Who calls us each by name

Because you are alive
We speak to you in prayer
Jesus, too much of us is dead
So do it again, we pray
Bring life to us!

May we make such a racket
That we’re accused of nonsense
And yet stir souls
To run along
And see it’s true:
The tomb is empty
‘He is risen!’

Amen.