Matthew 28:1-10 page 1

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Little Trevor was a good boy on the whole, but the one thing that made his mum cross was his fussiness about food. She tried hard to make him eat what the rest of the family ate, but all too often he refused.

One day they were having prunes for tea, but Trevor would have none. She pleaded with him, she promised him treats, she threatened him with going straight to bed, and in the end, in sheer exasperation, she shouted, 'Trevor, God will be very cross with you if you don't eat your prunes!' But Trevor still refused, and so off he went to bed.

That night there was a terrible storm: the lightning flashed, the thunder crashed, and mum was a bit worried about little Trevor. She went up to his room, but he wasn't in his bed. She looked in the bathroom, in her bedroom, and then finally spotted the light on in the kitchen.

As she walked in, there was Trevor in front of the fridge, eating his bowl of prunes, and she heard him mutter, 'I don't know, God. What a lot of fuss to make about a few prunes!'
[Simon Coupland, A Dose Of Salts, p16f #8.]

Trevor was afraid of the thunder and lightning. The guards at the tomb of Jesus were afraid of an angel who looked like lightning. Unlike Trevor in his innocence, the guards had every right to feel afraid.

The women who visited the tomb and found it empty were afraid, too. The angel says to them, 'Do not be afraid', Jesus says to them, 'Do not be afraid', and in between the two they run off 'with fear and great joy'.

The message of the Resurrection for Christian disciples is, 'Do not be afraid'. The Resurrection replaces our fear with more welcome qualities. Here are three:

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.