Is Your Tomb Empty?

I sat in church on Easter Sunday, just 2 days ago, and listened to the anthem the choir sang, He Is Not Here. The lyrics are: "He is not here, He is risen. See the tomb is empty where He lay." See the tomb is empty. Tomb is defined as “an enclosure for a corpse cut in the earth or rock.” Not something that is made for escape or exiting. Why would they be made that way? The person in the tomb will not be waking or walking. They are dead. When Mary went to the tomb early that Easter morning, Jesus had been dead since about 3pm on Friday. There was no room for speculation that Jesus might have been alive when He was placed in the tomb, but even if that was the case he was buried for more than a day. When Mary went to the tomb it was empty. That would be the same as if we had buried a loved one and went back to the graveside 2 days after the funeral, and the casket had been unearthed and lay open with no one in it. Pretty freaky stuff. I can’t imagine what I would think or feel. I’m sure my first thought would be the same as Mary’s. Someone has taken the body. Mary couldn’t celebrate the empty tomb. She was too close. She couldn’t see the miracle. We have that privilege. Do we celebrate, though? We may celebrate that Jesus is alive, but that tomb. Jesus conquered death for our freedom but not just spiritual freedom. We fill the tomb over and over again with worry and doubt, hate and fear, self-loathing and mistrust. We cannot celebrate. We can’t even get inside the tomb to see that it’s empty. We are free, if we let ourselves be. His tomb was empty. Let yours be too.