A few years ago I received an Easter card that carried the greeting: "May you spend the rest of your life walking away from empty tombs." On first glance, I thought it a curious message. Then, in one of those "aha" moments that strike like a whack on the side of the head, I realized its powerful significance.

The Gospels tell us that during the days following Christ's crucifixion, the disciples were in a state of despair, anxiety and fear.

They feared similar deaths for themselves. Mary Magdalene and the other women disciples, setting out in the darkness before dawn to anoint the body of Jesus, anxiously wondered how they would move the huge stone away from the tomb. Finding the stone rolled back and the tomb empty, they feared that someone had stolen the body of their beloved. Yet another terror engulfed them when a young man they encountered at the tomb asked, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"

They misunderstood what Jesus said and did what we have a tendency to do in our own lives: look for life among the dead.

The Easter season can provide us with an opportunity to reexamine that tendency.

In our concern that changes threaten our future, do we experience fear? Are we anxious about the heavy burdens before us? Are we looking for new life among that which is dead? Are despair, cynicism, anxiety, and fear about the future imprisoning us in old tombs?

The Easter message is one of hope, not fear. Our God longs to refresh us with new life. We have to risk doing what the first disciples finally did: refuse to allow fear to paralyze us. We must roll up our sleeves and walk courageously among the living.

Speak and act boldly because we have been redeemed by Jesus Christ.

Easter summons us to spend the rest of our lives walking away from the empty tombs of death, despair, anxiety and fear toward the hope and possibility of new life.

Fortunately, Easter gives us a 50-day season to work on our walk.