All We Need to Know in One Weekend--Linden Malki

God created us to be His family, with the potential to be in an awesome relationship with Him. However, we cannot live up to our potential on our own abilities. When Jesus walked the earth, some people recognized Him as God-sent, and followed Him; others saw Him as a threat to their own power and ambitions. This attitude led to Jesus' death! But God allowed Jesus' death to break the power of evil and death. "Good Friday" is the demonstration of God using a really really bad thing to have great power for Good.

The Jewish Sabbath is the centerpiece of Jewish law. Think about that Sabbath--His friends were devastated and afraid, and there was nothing that they could do. All of the rituals and observances have their place, but they could not bring Him back; they could not even prepare His body for burial. A Festival Sabbath should have been a joyful time, but it was probably the worst day of their lives. It must have  looked like a dead end.

Now look at Easter morning!  The one thing they really had not expected, or even thought possible, happened! Death was not the end; death had no power over Him. They saw a power here that would change their lives in even ways that the previous three years as His constant companions hadn't done.
Look at the difference between His followers on that horrible Sabbath, and six weeks later on Pentecost!
They knew, as we should also know, that when Jesus had talked about Life, it was what we had been created for, but cannot reach outside of Him.

I was the one with my mother-in-law on her last night. She was restless; even medicated, she couldn't sleep.  Very early on a Tuesday morning, she kept saying "This morning will be Sunday!" And I kept answering, "No, yesterday was Monday, it will be Tuesday." She kept saying "It will be Sunday!" and seemed to be seeing her mother and a deceased sister. She passed into eternity about 6am that morning. I realized that she was seeing something that she could only describe as having a Sunday atmosphere; that that first Easter Sunday was our glimpse of eternity.