Prairie Faith Devotions

Good morning and welcome to Prairie Faith Devotions for Tuesday, April 21, 2026.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the readings the past two Sundays – Jesus visiting the disciples who were gathered behind locked doors and Jesus walking with the two on the road to Emmaus. We hear them a week and two weeks after the big celebration when churches are full and folks are shouting, “Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!” but these two encounters occur on the same day that the tomb was discovered empty and we are hard pressed to understand how they could be fearful and heartbroken and not recognize Jesus on the most glorious of days.
Grief! Who among us has not experienced grief on some level? And yet it’s a tangled thing that doesn’t often fit the box that we want to put it in. We think we know how grief is supposed to work – how we’re supposed to be sad for a time and then move on somehow. Shouldn’t the good news from that first Easter morning have simply erased all that grief, we ask. Ah, but there was that whole ugly mess – the betrayal and the arrest – the mockery of a trial – the fear they felt as it all unfolded – the scattered disciples and Peter’s denial – and that horrible, horrible display of cruel torture – the crucifixion! Even if they wanted to believe the news about the empty tomb, there would be no erasing those events from their hearts and minds.
In this Easter season, grief has not left us – it never really does. Grief changes us – yesterday marked the anniversary of two deaths of friends who left us much too soon – for one it was nine years ago – for the other it was two – both left grieving widows and children who are in different places in their journeys of grief – even as another family is dealing with a very recent death under some particularly difficult circumstances with lots of questions and heartache attached – be it the cancer diagnosis or the Parkinson’s grueling journey or the news of war and inflations and so much more. And they are not alone – grief is all around us and in us as we try to make sense of all the brokenness that surrounds us. But that’s where these pieces of the Easter story that we’ve encountered these past two Sundays meet us. The stories of Jesus visiting the disciples who were gathered behind locked doors and Jesus walking with the two on the road to Emmaus aren’t there to point fingers at the disciples who were fearful or doubting or so saddened that they couldn’t even recognize Jesus – they are there to show us that Jesus walks with us even (or especially) in those deep darks places of grief.
In this Easter season, may you find comfort and joy in the news of the resurrection in and through the empty tomb, but also the stories of Jesus visiting the disciples who were gathered behind locked doors and Jesus walking with the two on the road to Emmaus (John 20:19-31 and Luke 24:13-35). And if you’re in North Dakota, enjoy some 80 degree sunshine even as you prepare for Friday’s forecasted snow! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
Pastor Janet Gwin, Kenmare, Retired