There are some days I leave the writing to the experts. Today is one of those days.

"So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died?

I can tell you this: that what I believe happened and what in faith and with great joy I proclaim, is that he somehow got up, with life in him again, and the glory upon him. And I speak very plainly here, very unfancifully.

He got up.

He said, 'Don't be afraid.' Rich man, poor man, child: sick man, dying; man who cannot believe, scared sick man, lost one. Young man with your life ahead of you. 'Don't be afraid.'

He said, 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.'

Anxiety and fear are what we know best in this fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumor of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it.

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well.

And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.

In the end, his will, not ours, is done.

Love is the victor.

Death is not the end.

The end is life. His life and ours lived through him, in him.

Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery and benediction that our wildest visionary has ever dared to dream.

Christ our Lord has risen!"

(Frederick Buechner, 1926-2022)