My favorite verse in the Resurrection accounts is from the Gospel of Luke, read at the Easter Vigil every third year. The angels say to the women who have come to anoint the body of Jesus, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.”

“Why do you seek the living one among the dead?” Did we not hear what Jesus had promised, what he proclaimed to us? How we can still so easily lose hope! Seeking the living one among the dead, believing our lot is only to mourn, returning to the tombs in our life again and again.

Do you ever think that your life was a mistake, that it would better if you were not here? Stop looking for the living one among the dead! God created you in his image: he looked at you, what he had made, and found it very good. Or do you believe you are stuck, trapped, enslaved?

Stop looking for the living one among the dead! Go forward, march through the flood. The Lord will cast a fiery cloud upon your enemies, and lead you through the midst of the sea. Or do you think that your sins are too great, that you have lost the special love of God your maker?

Stop looking for the living one among the dead! With great tenderness he will take you back. For though the mountains fall and the hills be shaken, his love will never leave you. Or does it seem like holiness is impossible, you cannot escape your past, that you'll never change?

Stop looking for the living one among the dead! God will prove his holiness through you. He will give you a new heart, and his spirit will live within you. Were you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, the very passage he took?

Did you expect it to go differently in you than it did these last three days? Then let that old life die. Leave it in the tomb. Don’t go back. Stop looking for life there. Look instead to where the living one is. He's not in the tomb. He has been raised.

So go find where he is.