How I Found Myself Becoming a Proclaimer of Resurrection

I recently came into contact with someone who was deeply struggling with a difficult time in their life. You could say they were in a time of great distress and suffering. But within that suffering, there appeared to be this glimmer of restoration in the future, and I found myself pointing to the prospect of resurrection in that person’s life.

After the conversation, a question arose in me: When did I become a proclaimer of resurrection? 

It occurred to me that I had become a believer and a proclaimer of the resurrection in a way that I really haven’t been in the past. I wasn’t just proclaiming Christ was risen at Easter. I was proclaiming that God is a God of resurrection in all of our lives -- no matter what doubts the darkness sows.

Through my own experiences of God working in my life all these years, bringing me through suffering and death to a place of new life and restoration, I had become a believer that God really does resurrect. He really does give new life. He really does deliver all He promises. 

Hope is alive.

I remember reading a book some time ago that explained how we go through our own Paschal mystery: our own suffering, death and resurrection. I know that’s true now, and that suffering and death aren’t the end, but they are part of the Way to resurrection. Our own “little resurrections.”

We are all meant to have encounters and experiences in our faith journey, much like the women at the tomb and the disciples, that lead us to that same deeper belief and proclamation that God does in fact resurrect all that is dead, broken, and suffering. We partake in the Paschal mystery -- the whole Paschal mystery -- not just the dark parts of it.

In this season of spring and new life bursting up all around us, let us keep proclaiming the resurrection. He overcomes all. He is alive and working. He comes to bring us hope and goodness. Believe it. Proclaim it...especially to those held captive by darkness.

Alleluia!