Devotion
Easter: More Than a Long Weekend
"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." — John 11: 25–26
Every year, Easter arrives with chocolate eggs, hot cross buns, and a break from the school routine. But behind the public holidays lies a claim so extraordinary that it has shaped the course of human history for two thousand years.
Easter is not the celebration of a great man who lived and died and left a good example behind. It is the celebration of someone who, Christians believe, walked out of his tomb on the third day — alive.
That claim is either the most important fact in history, or the greatest story ever told. It doesn’t really allow for anything in between.
What actually happened?
The death of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the best-documented events of the ancient world. Roman historians, Jewish sources, and writers who had no sympathy for Christianity all record that Jesus was executed by crucifixion under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. On this point, history is not in serious dispute.
What happened next is where the story becomes remarkable.
Three days after his burial, the tomb was found empty. Over the following weeks, hundreds of people — in a variety of locations and circumstances — reported seeing Jesus alive. His followers, who had scattered in fear at his arrest, were transformed almost overnight into men and women willing to stake their lives on what they had witnessed. Most of them eventually did exactly that, dying rather than recanting their eyewitness accounts of the risen Jesus.
Within a generation, this movement had spread across the known world — beginning not in some distant city where the claims were unverifiable, but in Jerusalem itself, the very place where Jesus had been publicly executed and buried.
Why does it matter?
At Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School, Easter sits at the heart of everything we do and everything we are. We are a community shaped by the conviction that Jesus is not simply a historical figure or a moral teacher, but the living Saviour — the one who, as the apostle Paul put it, “was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25).
The resurrection means that death is not the final word on any human life. It means that forgiveness is real, that hope is not wishful thinking, and that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is not distant or indifferent but present, personal, and knowable.
For our learning community, Easter is more than a story, it is an invitation. The same risen Christ who appeared to his disciples, who transformed the lives of his first followers, and whose message has endured every attempt to extinguish it — still stands at the door of every human heart and knocks.
We hope that this Easter, amid the chocolate and the holidays and the family gatherings, there is also a moment of quiet reflection on that extraordinary morning in the garden, when an angel delivered the most hope-filled announcement in history in Matthew 28: 6:
“He is not here. He has risen, just as he said.”
On behalf of the team at Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School, we wish you and your family a blessed and meaningful Easter.
Dear God,
We come to you at Easter with grateful hearts - grateful that the tomb could not hold you, that death did not have the final word, and that the story did not end on Good Friday.
Thank you that your resurrection is not simply a moment in history, but a living hope for every person today. Thank you that because you rose, we need not fear death, that forgiveness is not merely a possibility but a certainty, and that we are known and loved by a God who is anything but distant.
Amen.
Blessings!
Will Wallace
Principal