Looking for a new way to celebrate Easter? Between busy schedules of egg hunts and baskets filled with candy, it can be hard to find the time to sit with God and feel gratitude for this holy season. Here are five Easter devotions to help you reflect on what this day is all about. Read them on your own before you say your Easter prayers, or gather the whole family to read them together before your Easter celebrations.
READ MORE: The Easter Story in 14 Bible Passages
1. An Easter Devotion: The Joy That Invades Our Hearts
by Elizabeth Sherrill
He is not here; for he has risen…—Matthew 28:6
Only a week had passed since that triumphant Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem—but what a difference in the little procession that set out now! No cheering crowds, no waving branches. Just a few silent women setting out in the gray dawn to perform the last sad rites at the tomb.
The day that changed human history was not a public occasion but a private one. The day when everlasting life broke into earthly time began not with celebration but with tears.
This is still the way Easter breaks into our lives—when we least expect it, when all seems lost. That’s when the stone rolls away and the angel speaks and “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54)
If it seems too good to be true, this joy that invades our hearts, it seemed so on the first Easter morning too. Mary Magdalene could not believe what her eyes were telling her; she took Jesus to be a gardener at work early among the graves. Preoccupied with her loss, she barely glanced at the figure standing before her on the path. She had a mournful task to fulfill and—
“Mary.”
There in the first light of dawn, Mary stood still. That voice…that tone of loving involvement. This was the moment, the moment when Jesus called her by name, that Easter broke like the sunrise into her heart. It is how we recognize Him still. The risen Jesus calls us so personally, comes into our lives to individually, that with Mary Magdalene, we cry out in glad recognition.
READ MORE: 10 Easter Eggs from Around the World
And then we do what the women did on that first Easter Sunday. Dropping their spices and ointments, the burdens of their sad errand, they rushed to tell the others. They set the pattern, these women who were first at the empty tomb, the two-fold pattern of the Christian faith newborn that Easter morning. They met the living Jesus. And they brought the good news to those who grieved.
That’s always our role, when it’s Easter in our lives; to tell someone else that He is risen.
2. An Inspiring Easter Surprise
by Penney Schwab
For the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given. —2 Corinthians 1:11
It was a wonderful Easter. Morning worship at our son Patrick’s church in Texas featured an excellent choir and inspiring sermon. Our daughter-in-law Patricia prepared a veritable feast for dinner. After our traditional family egg hunt, my husband Don said, “We need to head home, so we can stop in Amarillo and get Penney’s Easter surprise.”
Read this inspirational family devotion for Easter and see what Penney’s husband had in store for their surprise.
3. Easter Always Comes
by Marci Alborghetti
Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him. —Psalm 62:8
“I saw a robin!” My mother’s voice on the phone had the singsong quality of smug victory. She might as well have added, “Na-na-na-na-na!” She likes to win this game.
Mom and I have an annual competition to see who can spot the year’s first robin. It means that the winter will, indeed, end, even when we’re convinced it’s going to go on forever. For both of us, it’s always been a long, gray crawl from Christmas to Easter. So the first robin is an important signpost, and even more so this year.
Read this heartwarming Easter devotion and learn how the sighting of a robin taught Marci an important Easter lesson.
4. A Devotion About the Easter Miracle Deep Within
by Elizabeth Sherill
He is not here; he has risen! —Luke 24:6
“He is not here,” the angels told the little group of grieving women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning. “He has risen!” This is what angels, in their myriad shapes, tell us still, not only on this Easter, but every day.
For me, one of those angels is a handsome conifer, the only large tree in our yard. My husband John and I were new homeowners, not sure of how to care for the lawn and shrubs. But whatever our failures, the tree towered above them, drawing the eye away from weeds and bare spots. That’s why we were distressed when that fall some brown patches appeared among the dark green needles.
Read the rest of this beautiful devotion during your Easter celebrations and see how a conifer tree became an important Easter symbol.
5. A Devotion for Easter Monday
by John Sherrill
I am with you always… —Matthew 28:20
It’s Monday, the day after Easter. Yesterday, when the children and grandchildren left, my wife, Tib, and I went through the usual post-holiday letdown. We coped with it as we always do—cleaning up. I collected left-behind jelly beans before they could be trod into the rug, picked up a ball of colored foil where someone had missed a wastebasket, found a half-eaten chocolate rabbit under one of the kids’ beds.
Tib gathered the wicker baskets and carried them up to the attic, then got out the vacuum cleaner and attacked the escaped Easter grass. How did the shiny green strands get so far from the bedrooms where we had unpacked the baskets?
Read this unique Easter devotion and learn how a post-Easter clean-up became a sign of Hope for this couple.
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