It’s Easter again. In New Zealand, the financial year starts on April 1 (no joke), and then we led straight into a long weekend. Friday is a public holiday, as is Monday. So this year it was a bit like having a long holiday to celebrate the new (financial) year.

Of course, that’s totally irrelevant to what Easter is really about. I saw on Twitter earlier in the week that the account @jesus said “I have a bad feeling about this week”. That made me stop and think. The Scriptures report that (the real) Jesus had great intention about the upcoming week, even though he knew what was coming. In the garden in the final hours before being betrayed and arrested, Dr Luke reports that Jesus “sweated drops of blood”. That’s pretty serious inner stress to sweat that hard! The blood sweat matched the words – on the one hand, “take this cup away from me, Father, if it can be removed”, and equally, on the other, “not my will but yours be done”. So I think that Jesus did see ahead to the bitterness of the cup (and therefore had a bad feeling), but because he saw beyond the cup to what it would mean for people like you and me, actually had a great feeling about the week.

Anyway, it’s all there in the Bible. Take a look at Matthew, Mark, Luke or John (the gospels). Those books tell the story. There was no Twitter back then, just people who were eyewitnesses, and documented accordingly what they saw (or for Luke, researched).

He is Risen!