A Reflection for Easter Sunday: At the Crack of Dawn
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. Come just as you are, bringing whatever is on your heart today. Take a few moments and allow yourself to just be. Take a couple deep breaths, grab yourself a cup of coffee, light a candle, do something that brings you comfort. Allow yourself to be present in this moment.
Consider the places in your own life where God has been present—even when the light was dim, the night long, and hope hard to hold.
There is no resurrection without crucifixion. There is no dawn without the night. But oh, how faithful is the morning.
— Jan Richardson
Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.
— Frederick Buechner
Luke 24:1-6
At the crack of dawn on Sunday, the women came to the tomb carrying the burial spices they had prepared. They found the entrance stone rolled back from the tomb, so they walked in. But once inside, they couldn’t find the body of the Master Jesus.
They were puzzled, wondering what to make of this. Then, out of nowhere it seemed, two men, light cascading over them, stood there. The women were awestruck and bowed down in worship.
Food for Thought
“At the crack of dawn” — what a lovely description. It is that time of morning when light has just begun to break through. You can’t quite tell exactly where the curtain of night has split, but there is just enough light for the women to make out the way to the tomb. It isn’t just early — it’s the very earliest part of morning, when night and day seem to blur into each other.
For most of us, it’s too early for people of sound mind to be moving about with purpose and direction — at least not without our coffee! And yet, it is in this early hour that the women rise — when all else is sleeping — when they should be sleeping.
It has always been the women who have been up late into the night or awake early with the dawn, making preparations. It was my grandma who would rise before the sun to begin Sunday lunch — a habit I’m sure she learned from her own mom growing up on a farm. My mom still stays up late into the night on Christmas Eve — in the stillness, in the quiet — putting in the final touches for the magic of Christmas morning.
And I, too, have discovered the gift of staying up after my family has gone to sleep or waking before they stir — of keeping watch during that sacred time when the spinning of the world seems to slow just enough. When life pauses to make more space for what God might do when we are finally resting — finally out of the way.
The women make their way to the tomb. They have gathered together the burial spices. By the earliest morning light, they journey together to the place where Jesus’s body was laid. But as they approach, nothing is as they expect it to be. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. Jesus is nowhere to be found.
In the early part of morning, while the world still sleeps, they find that — even in our rest — God is very much at work: rolling away stones, defeating death, resurrecting what has died, and breathing new life.
In this first sunrise service, these women rediscover the God of their faith stories — the God who, while creation rested, orchestrated all that is from the nothing that was; who made a way in the night for a people to go free; who delivered manna in the morning to a people wandering the desert; who hovered over a valley of lifeless bones and made them dance; who entered a tomb of death, and resurrected life.
This is what the women behold in that hour when night and day blur into one. At the crack of dawn — an inbreaking of holy newness and possibility. When night closes the door on what was, and at its dawn, ushers in the divine possibility of what — with God’s help — just might be.
Perhaps this is why people around the world gather in the early hour on Easter morning, while it is still mostly night: to be reminded of — and perhaps even to catch a glimpse of — what God is doing while the rest of the world sleeps. Rolling away the stones that have sealed up our hope. Defeating death and the evil forces that wreak havoc in our world and our communities. Resurrecting what has died around us with a spirit of life and love.
This is what the message of resurrection is gifting us this Easter morning.
In the midst of our Holy Week kind of world — marked by brokenness and betrayal, by deep grief and unnecessary death, by suffering and forsakenness — the resurrection brings into human experience the deep, abiding love of a God who does not abandon us.
As the women discovered on that first Easter Sunday, this is a God who knows our suffering. Who, too, has experienced the forsakenness of the cross. Who does not leave us to dwell in the tomb alone, but enters into our suffering with us — when we are sleeping, when we are exhausted, when night seems to eclipse our hope — breathing into us again and again a spirit of resurrection.
Bringing forth life.
At the crack of dawn.
Set aside one morning this week to rise just before dawn. Before the world wakes up, before your to-do list begins, sit in the quiet. Watch the light change. Listen to the stillness. And ask yourself: What is God doing in the places I assumed were finished, sealed, or silent?
Find a small stone and hold it in your hand. As you do, consider: What in my life feels heavy, sealed up, or in need of resurrection? What hope have I buried? What grief have I carried in silence? In prayer, offer that stone to God—naming it aloud or in silence. Then place it somewhere visible this week as a symbol of God’s ongoing, unseen work.
For a printable version of today's reflection Click Here!
Blessing
God of Easter Morning,
We thank You for the women who rose early, who walked with courage toward grief, and who bore witness to the miracle of an empty tomb. May we, too, be awake to the quiet ways You move in the shadows — rolling away stones, breathing life into what has been lost, birthing hope where there once was none. Let the spirit of resurrection stir within us— a quiet but steady flame, a holy persistence, a love that refuses to be sealed behind any stone. We pray this in the name of the risen Christ.
Amen.
A little Table Talk for your table...
When was the last time you felt God was most present during a quiet or still moment?
How do you imagine God working in the quiet or still places of your life—especially when it feels like nothing is happening or when you feel most distant from God?
Where are our communities in deep need of resurrection, and how can we be faithfully attentive to God’s calling for us to be part of that resurrection work?
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
Ask your kiddos is they have ever been awake at sunrise? Have them describe what it is like to see the sun come up from the ground?
Take turns sharing about a time when you have been surprised by something good that happened when you weren’t expecting it? What was it?
Make a list of some ways that you know God is with you even though you can’t see God?
Meet This WEek’s Writer...
Lin Story-Bunce is a North Carolina native and lovingly calls Greensboro, NC home. She earned a Masters of Divinity from Wake Forest University and has served a wonderful and thoughtful congregation at College Park Baptist Church since 2009, pastoring to families and their faith development. Most of all, Lin loves the moments she gets to connect with her family, snowboarding with her wife, and keeping up with their four kiddos and two energetic pups. Lin is a teacher, preacher, dreamer, and procrastinator who has a knack for trying to do way too many things in far too little time.
To hear more from Lin throughout the week, follow along on our Instagram!