John 20:11–18
A man I read about was adopted at birth and grew up with no knowledge of his biological family. In his forties, a DNA service connected him with a half-sister he had never known. They exchanged careful, tentative messages for weeks. Then one afternoon she called him, and the moment he heard her voice, something unexpected happened. She said his name, and he wept.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 9”
1 Corinthians 15:12–24
A historian I read about spent two years trying to disprove the resurrection. He was not a believer, he was a skeptic, and he approached the accounts of Easter the way a detective approaches a crime scene: looking for inconsistencies, alternate explanations, reasons to dismiss. He catalogued the evidence on both sides. He interviewed scholars. He traced the manuscript traditions.
Two years later, he had not disproved it. He had, instead, found his objections answered one by one, until what remained was a historical event he could not explain away. He became a Christian not by feeling but by following the evidence where it led.
Paul made the same kind of argument to the Corinthian church. Some believers there had begun to doubt whether resurrection was real, perhaps, like many in the Greek world, they found a bodily resurrection philosophically distasteful. Paul responded with bracing logic: if there is no resurrection, then Christ was not raised. And if Christ was not raised, then your faith is empty, your sins are unforgiven, and those who have died in Jesus are simply gone (1 Corinthians 15:17–18, ESV).
He did not soften this. The resurrection is not decorative to Christianity. It is load bearing. Everything hangs on it. If the tomb is still occupied, the whole structure collapses. What Christ has been raised from the dead means is not a footnote to the faith. It is the foundation.
But, and this is the word that changes everything, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:20, ESV). The verb is perfect tense: a past event with ongoing, permanent effect. He rose, and He remains risen. Death has been defeated, not in theory but in fact, in history, in a garden outside Jerusalem on a Sunday morning.
This Good Friday, we pause at the cross, not because the story ends there, but because it can’t be skipped. The resurrection is glorious precisely because the death was real. He carried what we could not carry, so that we might live what we could not live on our own.
What doubts have you carried about the resurrection? How would your daily life look different if you lived as though Christ’s resurrection were the most certain fact in your world?
Risen Christ, thank You for dying a death that was real so that You could offer a life that is eternal. I choose today to build everything on the truth of an empty tomb.
Psalm 2
A photojournalist who covered conflict zones for twenty years described what she called the hardest moment of her career. Not the violence she’d witnessed, but a single night in a city under siege when she genuinely believed darkness was going to win. The brutality seemed total, the cruelty organized, the hope of liberation absurd.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 7”
Exodus 2:23–25
For eighteen months, a woman I know wrote weekly letters to her estranged adult daughter who refused all contact. She never knew if the letters were read, returned, or thrown away. The silence was total. She kept writing anyway, because the love didn’t stop just because the replies did.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 6”
John 14:1–10
Maybe you’ve been there. You’re hiking a trail, the fog rolls in thick, and suddenly you can barely see five feet ahead. Your map is useless, all the landmarks you’d been following have disappeared. You’re standing at a fork in the trail, genuinely unsure which way leads back to the trailhead and which leads deeper into the backcountry.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 5”
John 13:6–20
A master woodworker once described the most discouraging phase of any project: the middle. “The beginning is exciting,” he said. “You have vision, you have energy. The end is satisfying, you can see the finished piece. But the middle? The middle just looks like a mess of sawdust and mistakes. That’s when most people quit.”
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 4”
Romans 8:18–27
A cellist I once heard interviewed said something that has stayed with me for years. She was asked which pieces she found most moving to perform. Without hesitation, she said the slow, mournful ones, the adagios, the elegies, the laments. “There’s something in sadness,” she explained, “that reaches for what beauty is supposed to be. Joy tells you it exists. Longing tells you where to look.”
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 3”
Romans 5:1–11
I read about a woman who spent three years training for a marathon she never ran. A stress fracture sidelined her two weeks before race day. She said later that the hardest part wasn’t the physical pain, it was the quiet, creeping question that followed her for months: What’s the point of all this effort if it can be taken away so easily?
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 2”
Isaiah 53:4-7
It’s a question I’ve been asked more than a few times, usually over coffee, sometimes in a hospital room, occasionally from someone sitting in the back pew with tears they’re trying to hide. Why did Jesus have to die? The truth is, it’s not an easy question to explain. Not because the answer isn’t there, but because the weight of it is almost too much to hold in a single conversation.
Continue reading “Why Did Jesus Have to Die?”
Isaiah 50:10
There are stretches in life when you do everything right and still feel lost. You read your Bible. You pray. You show up on Sunday. And yet the fog stays. The confusion lingers. Some of us are walking through one of those stretches right now, and the hardest part isn’t the darkness itself. It’s wondering whether we did something wrong to end up in it.
Continue reading “When the Dark Won’t Lift”
“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the LORD you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my lifetime.’” (Isaiah 39:8, NIV)
Life can feel like a roller coaster. One moment we’re celebrating a victory; the next we’re facing a crisis that shakes us to the core. King Hezekiah knew this reality well. His life reads like a dramatic story—miraculous healing followed by foolish pride, divine favor followed by sobering consequences. Yet in his journey, we find wisdom for navigating our own ups and downs.
Continue reading “Lessons from a Roller Coaster Life”
As a new year begins, we do not all step into it the same way. Some of us come hopeful and eager, ready for a fresh start. Others arrive cautiously, carrying disappointments from the year behind us. Some are grieving. Some are tired. Some are quietly wondering if they have the strength to face whatever comes next. God meets us in all of those places, and it is there that our confidence must begin.
Continue reading “This Can Be Your Best Year Yet”
Luke 2:1–7
It is funny how the story sneaks up on you. Not the twinkly Hallmark version, but the quieter one tucked into Luke’s Gospel, the weary couple, the long road to Bethlehem, and that awkward moment when someone shrugs and says, “Sorry… no room.” And you wonder, really? No room for them?
Continue reading “Making Room For Jesus”
There is something sacred about standing at the edge of another Christmas season. Before the usual rush settles in, it helps to pause, truly pause, and consider why this time matters so deeply. Often the most meaningful moments come when we stop long enough to notice what God is doing in the quieter corners of our lives (Psalm 46:10).
Continue reading “Waiting for the Light (Isaiah 9:2)”
Read: Isaiah 32-37
Today’s Passage: Isaiah 35:4
The headlines assault us daily with an unrelenting stream of troubling news—terrorism, economic instability, natural disasters, and wars. Each story can fill believers with fear and anxiety, draining us emotionally until we wonder if anything good remains in this world. Yet amid this uncertainty, Isaiah 32-37 offers a powerful reminder of God’s faithfulness and protection.
Throughout these chapters, Isaiah presents a beautiful contrast: the promise of Christ’s coming kingdom (Isaiah 32:1-8, 15-20) and the Lord’s assurance of victory over our enemies (Isaiah 33:5-6, 21-22; 34:8; 35:4, 10; 37:5-7, 22-35). The central message rings clear in Isaiah 35:4: ‘Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”‘ This verse encourages believers to stand firm in God’s power during difficult times.
This assurance isn’t a generic promise for everyone—Isaiah is speaking directly to believers. For those who trust in the Lord, fear doesn’t have to be our default response. We don’t need to sit around worrying, allowing anxiety to rob us of joy. The reason is beautifully simple: He is our God. As Isaiah 59:19 reminds us, ‘When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD will lift a standard against him.’ This assurance helps believers stand firm and trust in God’s protection.
When we genuinely believe in the Lord, nothing can defeat us. Through obedience comes the victory that Jesus won on the cross. We are His adopted children, and He will defend us. Romans 8:31 asks the rhetorical question that should settle our hearts: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
However, this promise doesn’t mean life will be easy. If Jesus is our example—and He faced tremendous hardship—we can expect struggles too. We’re engaged in a daily battle against the world, the flesh, and Satan. Each seeks to defeat us and hinder our walk with the Lord.
Fear is one of Satan’s most effective weapons, and he wields it with precision. When we doubt God’s power, give in to worry, or forget what the Lord has done, the enemy gains a foothold in our lives. But we must not accept fear into our hearts when the Lord is just one prayer away. Remember: fear is the opposite of faith.
As 2 Timothy 1:7 declares, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” In these uncertain times, let us cling to God’s promises in Isaiah, standing firm in faith rather than cowering in fear. When fear rises, turn in prayer and cling to the promises of God (Isa. 35:4) so that our hearts are reminded of who our God is.
Central Haywood Church of Christ 