Our Only Hope on Holy Week

Death is a somber cloud that hangs over Holy Week. I know Sunday is coming. I know that Christ will not stay in the ground. Yet I also know that every passing Easter finds me a year closer to my own grave. It reminds me of another tomb that must be occupied before it can be emptied.

I came from Adam and, like Adam, will one day die. In Adam, everything and everyone I care about will be silenced by the grave. In Adam, death holds the final word. In Adam, life’s joy is suffocated by the sting awaiting me.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ – by grace you have been saved.” Ephesians 2:4-5

If we are in Christ, then like Christ, we will one day rise. In Christ, our labor and love are not in vain. In Christ, abundant life holds the final word. In Christ, life’s greatest joys are a small taste of what awaits in the age to come.

Holy week reminds us that death has been given a terminal diagnosis. The somber cloud will soon be burned away and replaced with light from clear skies; never to return. Every passing Easter announces the day our tombs will open, and Death will go to its grave once and for all. Holy week is a declaration, like the Savior who’s gone before us, that our Sunday’s coming too.