I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore." (Rev
Flowers! Easter lilies! speak to me this morning the same dear old lesson of immortality which you have been speaking to so many sorrowing souls.
Wise old Book! let me read again in your pages of firm assurance that to die is gain.
Poets! recite to me your verses which repeat in every line the Gospel of eternal life.
Singers! break forth once more into songs of joy; let me hear again the well-known resurrection psalms.
Tree and blossom and bird and sea and sky and wind whisper it, sound it afresh, warble it, echo it, let it throb and pulsate through every atom and particle; let the air be filled with it.
Let it be told and retold and still retold until hope rises to conviction, and conviction to certitude of knowledge; until we, like Paul, even though going to our death, go with triumphant mien, with assured faith, and with serene and shining face.
O sad-faced mourners, who each day are wending
Through churchyard paths of cypress and of yew
Leave for today the low graves you are tending
And lift your eyes to God's eternal blue
It is no time for bitterness or sadness
Twine Easter lilies, not pale asphodels
Let your souls thrill to the caress of gladness
And answer the sweet chime of Easter bells.
If Christ were still within the grave's low prison
A captive of the enemy we dread
If from that moldering cell He had not risen
Who then could chide the gloomy tears you shed
If Christ were dead there would be need to sorrow
But He has risen and vanquished death for aye
Hush, then your sighs, if only till the morrow
At Easter give your grief a holiday.
May Riley Smith.
A well-known minister was in his study writing an Easter sermon when the thought gripped him that his Lord was living. He jumped up excitedly and paced the floor repeating to himself, "Why Christ is alive, His ashes are warm, He is not the great 'I was,' He is the great 'I am.'" He is not only a fact, but a living fact. Glorious truth of Easter Day
We believe that out of every grave there blooms an Easter lily, and in every tomb there sits an angel. We believe in a risen Lord. Turn not your faces to the past that we may worship only at His grave, but above and within that we may worship the Christ that lives. And because He lives, we shall live also. --Abbott.