As I got ready in the darkness of this rainy morning, I thought of the women who went to Jesus’ tomb that Sunday morning. Spring mornings in Jerusalem are chilly and damp, and the women probably struggled to wrap themselves warmly while shifting the burden of the spices they were carrying. Jesus’s burial had been hasty, racing the sun’s descent into Sabbath, and they were coming back to do a proper job. I can only imagine the exhausted grief that laid heavy on their hearts as they trudged through the streets to the tomb.

Just days before, they had followed along with the disciples, marveling at the crowds shouting adoration to the man seated on the young donkey: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna! Save us. . .” They all had great expectations.

But now the jubilation of that day just added to their grief. On Friday, they had heard Jesus’ last words. They had seen Him breathe for the last time. They had helped Joseph with His lifeless body, and now they wondered who would help them roll away the stone so they could finish the burial.

The stone was already rolled away. He was not in the tomb.

Here is history’s hinge: Jesus’ tomb was empty!

If Jesus had not raised from the dead, you wouldn’t have heard of Him. Those women would have faded back into obscurity. His disciples would have gone back to their fishing nets and their tiny Galilean towns and tried to carry on. They all would have likely lived with the constant embarrassment for having been bamboozled by an itinerant preacher.

But that isn’t what happened. Can you imagine what Mary Magdalene felt when she heard the Lord speak her name? She was coming to pour spices on His body, but instead knelt at His living, wounded feet. She ran to tell the disciples: “I have seen the Lord.”

And this is the hinge of every individual’s life: Do you know Jesus? Have you seen the resurrected Lord? Everything before that moment is striving after the wind. Everything after that moment is the surety of life eternal with Him.

This day may have started out as dark and gray and damp, but it doesn’t stay that way! “The Lord is risen, indeed!”

Israel Photos courtesy of www.BiblePlaces.com.