Thirteen Alive

In June 2018, twelve boys from the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach vanished into the Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand. Monsoon rains flooded the passages behind them. For nine days, families gathered at the cave mouth, lighting incense, clutching photographs, bracing themselves for the worst.

Then British diver John Volanthen surfaced with three words that changed everything: "They're all alive."

The families had come to a sealed place expecting death. They found life.

That is the earthquake of Matthew 28. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary walked to the tomb at dawn carrying burial spices, the ancient equivalent of bringing flowers to a grave. They came to tend a body. Instead, they found the stone rolled away, an angel sitting where death should have been, and a message that defied everything they knew: "He is not here; He has risen."

Notice what Jesus says when He meets them on the road: "Do not be afraid." The same words spoken to terrified families outside that flooded cave. Because the news is too good, too enormous, to absorb without trembling.

Every Easter, God meets us at the mouth of our sealed places, our grief, our hopelessness, our certainty that the story is over, and rolls the stone away. The tomb is empty. The cave is open. He is not there. He has risen.