By LeAnn Hampton
Today is the second Sunday of Easter. Last week’s Easter Sunday worship was an amazing time of great joy and excitement as we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus.
During the Sundays of Lent, our Wilshire Pre-K Sunday School class (4- and 5-year-olds) learned about a different aspect of the life of Jesus. Using the Godly Play curriculum, we started with the birth of Jesus, and the following week we talked about Jesus as a 12-year-old boy learning in the temple. Each week we reviewed what we learned the previous week and added another important aspect of the life of Jesus. This led us to Easter, when we learned about Jesus’ death on Friday, followed by the women going to the tomb on Sunday only to find it empty. We told our young friends that just as Jesus was alive with his friends then, he is with us now. Hearing this story, one child’s eyes widened as he said, “Well, that’s just crazy … he was dead and then alive? That’s crazy!”
How often do my young friend’s words cross our minds when we think about the resurrection? We’ve never seen a dead person coming back to life, which gives us something in common with Thomas in today’s Scripture passage. Although Thomas was interested in his friends’ stories of seeing Jesus alive after the crucifixion, Thomas needed a firsthand experience.
What about us? What do we need to help strengthen our belief in the resurrection of Jesus? Somehow worshiping together, hearing the Scriptures, singing about God’s attributes and being reminded that “we walk by faith and not by sight” help us to persevere in our own faith journey.
As we told our young friends last week about the resurrection, “It seems crazy, but that’s the mystery of Easter and it makes all the difference. The story continues forever.”