The church year · Easter · Easter Sunday and the fifty days after
Walking away tired? He has a habit of catching up.
Easter isn’t one Sunday. It’s fifty days of celebrating that death lost. The risen Jesus spent those first days finding discouraged friends one by one.
You used to feel it. Now church feels like a building and faith feels like a memory. Maybe you’re grieving someone and the lilies seem like a lot. Maybe you’re just tired. The first Easter was full of people like you, walking home sad, hiding behind locked doors, crying at a tomb.
Fellow travelers
We aren’t the first to walk this way.
- Two disciples on the Emmaus road said, “We had hoped.” Jesus came up and walked with them, and they didn’t recognize him until he broke the bread (Luke 24:13–35).
- Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener. Then he said her name, and she knew his voice (John 20:11–16).
- Thomas missed the first meeting and refused to believe. Jesus came back a week later, for him (John 20:24–29).
- Peter had denied him three times. Jesus made him breakfast and asked him three times, “Do you love me?” (John 21:15–17).
Before you can find your way back, the risen Jesus comes walking down your road.
Where the Shepherd meets us
The destination of every season is the same: God himself.
- The Good Shepherd “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3). He still knows yours.
- He bore our sins so that we, who were like sheep going astray, could return to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls (1 Pet 2:24–25).
- “I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever” (Rev 1:18). Whatever ended for you, it isn’t the last word.
Take a walk this week and tell Jesus honestly what you had hoped for. Then walk the rest of the way in quiet, as if he were beside you. He is.
Keep walking
- Tired of Church
- Us with God and Death
- Us with God and Doubt
- The Calendarthe whole year at a glance