Despite Terror on Easter, Jesus Reminds Us Death Is Not the End

A suicide bomber killed at least 65 people and injured more than 280 others, mostly women and children, in a rural area of Pakistan which was crowded for the Easter holiday weekend. Police said it was not clear whether the attack had deliberately targeted Pakistan’s small Christian minority. It is a true travesty that such an attack would happen on Easter Sunday, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ should give us hope, even in these dark times of terror and death around the world.

Pakistan is mostly Muslim, but the BBC reported that there is speculation Christians celebrating Easter were the target. Across the world, there is a terrorist attack practically every day. While some cause more of a stir than others (the Brussels attacks or last year’s Paris attacks, for instance), it is particularly dark to have a terror attack on Easter, the most holy day in the Christian calendar.

However, Easter celebrates the day that Jesus rose from the dead, conquering death and demonstrating his promise that his followers will rise to eternal life with him. It is the one day on which, more than any other, Christians worship God for the foundational event of their faith: the proof that Jesus Christ is God and his promise to raise his followers from the dead.

We should mourn with those who mourn this day, witnessing the dark evil of terror on one of the holiest of days, but we should also rejoice to know that those who died in faith will be raised at the last day. As Jesus conquered death, so all who believe in Him will die and rise with him, to everlasting glory. In the words of Second Corinthians 4:16-17:

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

May God bring those who suffered today to that eternal weight of glory, and may we forgive even those vile murderers behind such attacks. Jesus forgave us, dying on the cross in our place, only to rise again to life eternal. In that hope, the Christian church was born, and in that hope we rest, rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn.