Long before bells rang and baskets waited by the door, the world held its breath at the edge of spring.
Winter had been a hard ruler that year. The hills were bare, the olive trees quiet, the people tired—tired of cold nights, tired of fear, tired of hoping for deliverance that never seemed to come. And yet, beneath the soil, seeds were doing what seeds have always done: breaking open in secret.
In those days lived a teacher who spoke as if he knew the language of both heaven and earth. He told stories about lost things being found about death not having the final word, about love stronger than law or empire. Some listened and felt their hearts burn. Others listened and grew afraid.
When he was taken and killed, it felt as if winter had won after all.
His friends hid. The city moved on. The sky darkened, and a stone was rolled over a tomb, heavy as despair itself. Everyone understood this ending. Death had always been good at endings.
But dawn has a way of interrupting certainty.
On the third morning, when the sun rose pale and unsure, a woman went to the tomb carrying spices—small acts of care for a world that had been broken. She expected silence. She expected stone. She expected finality.
Instead, the stone was moved.
The tomb was empty.
And in that emptiness, something new breathed its first breath.
The story spread quietly at first, like green shoots under frost. Whispers passed from house to house: He lives. Death has been undone. What was buried has risen. Fear loosened its grip. Grief cracked open and turned into awe.
People began to understand Easter not as an escape from suffering, but as a promise that suffering is not the end.
As the years passed, the story braided itself with older ones. With the rhythms of spring, when the earth itself rehearses resurrection—eggs hatching, lambs born, fields waking up after long sleep. Symbols piled gently atop truth, like flowers placed on a grave that is no longer occupied.
So, Easter became a story told in many languages.
It is told in lilies and sunrise services, in candles lit against the dark. It is told in eggs, fragile and full of life, and in feasts after fasting. It is told every time hope returns when it shouldn’t, every time love outlives loss.
Easter, at its heart, is the story that endings are not as final as they look.
That stones can be rolled away.
That what is buried may yet rise.
And that even after the longest winter, the world is still capable of beginning again.