Today around the world, Christians recited the following dialogue:

“Christ is risen.”
“He is risen indeed.”

And indeed he is. The apostle Paul correctly remarked that a false resurrection would result in a foolish religion. If Jesus has not been raised, then none of us will be redeemed (1 Corinthians 15:14-17). This simple equation has wrapped into it the complexities of what I call the “ripples of the resurrection”.

One cannot speak of the resurrection as a phenomenon regarding one body of one man missing from one tomb on one day in a land and time far removed from my own. This simply will not do. If even one legitimate resurrection has taken place, then a monumental movement has been unleashed. Death’s dam has sprung a leak. Mortality’s mantle has been torn. One dead one returning to life declares that the barriers we have deemed insurmountable are not so; limitations have lapsed and borders have broken.

A rock of resurrection has been dropped into the pool of the universe, and the ripples will extend until the edges of the cosmos have felt its impact. The same ripples are also moving through the portion of creation known as “your life”. Feel the swell of the wave as the resurrection’s reach extends to, and through, your realm. Stopped to breathe and dare to dream. Christ’s resurrection reconfigures our existence, and it has nothing to do with how worthy or unworthy we are of such a magical touch.

In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul sums up the mystery of Christ’s resurrection power in this sentence: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Some have remarked that the Greek text is even shorter and downright abrupt. It literally looks like these three phrases:

• If Anyone
• In Christ
• New Creation

A mathematician might create a basic equation from these three parts. A chemist might imagine a playful “boom” as the first two ingredients mix to form the third. Whatever the imagery, the language demands that we leave a gap. There is mystery. How does the combination of the first two phrases equate to the third? What connects these dots? What happens in that in-between space?

We need not know.

And we cannot know.

It’s the ripples of the resurrection. It is the movement of an incomparable wave proceeding from its start point and forcing its will and way upon all that it touches. One day the ripples of the resurrection will reach the edges of the pool. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

For today, be prayerful regarding, and perceptive to, the ripples of the resurrection in your life.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

And he is but the first.