God’s Enduring Yes!
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
written by Kate Satterstrom
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Easter morning is unmatched. There’s nothing quite like a packed church, flowers in bloom, and the rich joy of the Hallelujah Chorus. From a quiet sunrise service to an energetic Easter egg hunt, the day carries a kind of holy excitement. Add in Easter baskets, abundant meals, time with family and friends, and a break from the usual routine, and suddenly so much life is packed into just a few hours.
It is beautiful. It is full. It is unforgettable.
And then…it is over. Or at least, it feels that way.
A few days removed, the flowers begin to fade, the calendar fills back up, and life settles into its usual rhythms. After all the anticipation of Lent—the 40 days of reflection, repentance, and preparation—it can feel like we’ve reached the summit and are now making our way back down from the high of Easter. We proclaimed with confidence that death does not have the final word. But what does that mean for an ordinary Tuesday?
This is where the church gently reminds us of something essential: Easter is not just a day, it is a season.
For fifty days, the church lingers in resurrection. Easter Sunday is only the beginning. Throughout this season, we continue to celebrate the risen Christ—Jesus, who was dead and is now alive, still teaching, still appearing, still transforming the lives of his followers. Resurrection is not a single moment; it is a reality that unfolds.
Forty days after Easter, we mark the ascension, when Christ returns to be with God—no longer bound to one place, but present in a new and expansive way. And then, at Pentecost, the story opens even wider as the Holy Spirit is poured out and the church is born. What began at an empty tomb grows into a Spirit-filled community sent into the world.
In these fifty days, we move from grief to joy, from astonishment to understanding, from resurrection to mission. That journey cannot be contained in one morning, no matter how radiant or full.
Because defeating the grave was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of something entirely new.
As Karl Barth writes, “The history of Jesus Christ is the unmerited but unconditioned and unmistakable Yes of God to humankind.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3, 229) Easter is that “yes”. God’s decisive word of love, spoken into a world so often marked by fear, loss, and uncertainty. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we see that God does not abandon creation, but meets it, redeems it, and holds it fast.
That is why we can trust the promise we hear in Romans 8:38–39: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Nothing. Not even death. Not even the return to ordinary days.
So yes, we celebrate on Easter Sunday, pulling out all the stops. But we also celebrate on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and every ordinary day that follows. We celebrate in quiet moments and busy schedules, in joy and in uncertainty, in all the places where resurrection is still at work.
Because nothing is the same.
We are Easter people, living not just in memory of the resurrection, but in its light. Day by day, step by step, carried forward by God’s enduring “yes.”