The Wall That Came Down at Dawn

On the evening of November 9, 1989, Angelika Weiss stood in a crowd of East Berliners pressing toward the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint. For twenty-eight years, the Berlin Wall had been as immovable as death itself — concrete, razor wire, and armed guards separating families, severing lives. No one seriously believed it would fall in their lifetime.

Then the gates opened.

Angelika later described the moment as terror and euphoria tangled together in her chest. She could not stop shaking. She could not stop smiling. She walked through the checkpoint on legs that barely held her, half expecting someone to shout that it was all a mistake, that the barrier would slam shut again. Instead, on the other side, strangers embraced her. Her sister, whom she had not touched in eleven years, was running toward her.

That impossible mixture — trembling fear and overpowering joy occupying the same heartbeat — is exactly what Matthew describes when the women left the empty tomb. The stone had been rolled away from an opening that everyone assumed was permanently sealed. The angel said what no one dared believe: "He is not here; He has risen." And as they ran, breathless and stunned, Jesus Himself met them on the road.

Every Easter morning, God rolls away the barrier that seemed as permanent as concrete and razor wire. Death, that great dividing wall, has been opened from the other side. And the Risen Christ stands waiting — not behind us in the tomb, but ahead of us on the road, calling us forward into a life that no grave can contain.