The Fellowship That Love Built
The miracle of Easter is more than Jesus rising. It’s that love endured before the stone was ever rolled away.
This is the love that stays after death. This love mourns with trembling hands and shows up to an empty tomb. It does not expect triumph, but still carries care. This love is holy. This love is what builds fellowship. Not agreement. Not perfection. Not shared blood. But shared belief. Shared actions. Mutual understanding. Compassion. The choice to love without conditions.
The people didn’t say, “I’ll love you if he rises.”
They didn’t say, “I’ll stay with you only if there’s a miracle.”
They loved anyway.
They stayed anyway.
They mourned together, even when it hurt too much to speak.
That’s what makes their community so powerful. They were not a people glued together by certainty. They were a people bound by care. When the world broke open, they became family. They loved in more than the beautiful moments, but in the terrifying ones.
We need to remember that. Because we live in a world that breaks us open too. Our world is still full of crosses, still full of terror. It is still full of acts designed to silence, divide, and destroy.
In that kind of world, there will be voices, sometimes even inside ourselves, that say, “It’s safer not to care. It’s safer not to feel. It’s safer to let love go.”
But that’s the greatest loss of all.
When love dies in us, the cross wins.
When compassion dries up, the terror works.
But when we love harder, when we hold tighter, when we stay in fellowship even when our hearts are breaking? That’s where resurrection begins.
It’s not always loud. It’s not always triumphant. Sometimes resurrection starts with sitting next to someone in their grief and not letting them carry it alone. Sometimes it looks like choosing not to let hate become your language, even when everything in you is screaming for revenge. Sometimes it’s saying, “I don’t agree with you. But I won’t hate you.” Because hate is a betrayal. Of ourselves. Of our calling. Of the God who is love.
The worst thing you can do is allow someone’s act of terror take away your ability to love. Don’t give them that power. Don’t give the empire that victory.
Instead, love more. Help more. Be more tender with the people you encounter. Reach further. Forgive deeper. Let compassion guide your next step. That is what defeats death. That is what overcomes evil.
That is what builds the kind of fellowship no cross can break.
Not everyone will believe the same. Not everyone will see it the same way. But we can still be family. Chosen by love. Held together by something the empire never understood.