“Everything is going to be alright.”

Drawing hope from the resurrection of Jesus

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

(A four-minute read.)

As I was scrolling through Instagram yesterday, I came across a video that arrested my attention. It was a short clip of Timothy Keller, sharing an inspiring thought.

Keller, for those who don’t know, was one of the most influential evangelical pastors in America for three or four decades. And he’s one of the few evangelical pastors that I have a great deal of respect for.

In the clip, Keller, who seems to be doing a Zoom interview from his office, speaks to the hope that the resurrection of Jesus provides.

“If Jesus Christ was actually raised from the dead,” he begins, “if he really got up, walked out . . . everything is going to be alright. Whatever you’re worried about right now, whatever you’re afraid of, everything is actually going to be OK.”

This message is especially relevant right now, of course, as we’re in the Easter season (I’d highly recommend you watch the clip, as it’s even more moving to watch it than to read his words). But it’s all the more poignant when one realizes that Keller shared these thoughts as he was in the midst of battling pancreatic cancer, which he actually succumbed to just a short time after sharing these reflections.

So it came from a man who really needed this reminder himself—a man for whom this was really a statement of faith. As he was staring into the face of a form of cancer that’s basically undefeated, the idea of resurrection was not just a theological idea to him. It was the basis for his hope.

This message is always relevant, of course—but perhaps especially now. As the world feels like it’s spinning more and more and more out of control, we need the hope that the resurrection brings now more than ever. We need to be reminded that “everything will be alright” because Jesus rose from the grave—literally, bodily, gloriously.

This doesn’t mean, I don’t think, that everything will be resolved now—prior to the eschatological resurrection of which the resurrection of Jesus was a foreshadowing.

It means that, even while we work to be agents of resurrection life now, we recognize that our ultimate hope doesn’t depend on our ability to achieve the rescuing of this planet but on the Messiah who came back to life on that Easter morning.

In other words, as I shared a few weeks ago, my ultimate hope is in the premillennial return of Jesus, when, as Paul says, “the dead in Christ will rise” and Christ will make all things new by his divine power (see 1 Thessalonians 4:16).

Thus, my hope is in the power of Christ, not in the power of my—or our collective—ability to rescue and save ourselves.

Candidly, I needed to be reminded of this message yesterday. Not only have I experienced a bit of anxiety about the state of the world lately, but I was hours away from departing for Australia (it’s a long story, but my departure was delayed a couple days).

Indeed, as you’re reading this, I will (hopefully) have just landed in Istanbul, on my way to Melbourne.

Traveling around the world always sounds fun and exciting—but when it actually arrives, I suddenly get a bit anxious about flying and seriously depressed about being so far from my family.

I know, in the grand scheme of things, it’s actually a very minor stress. But it was my stress—and I needed to be reminded that, in light of the resurrection of Jesus, everything is going to be alright; that everything in the near future could go all wrong but ultimately everything in the eternal, transcendent future will be all right.

Could this simply be Marx’s “opiate of the masses,” providing comfort to people, and leading them into inaction and paralysis, but having no basis in reality?

Perhaps.

But as I’ve shared before, I’m fine with that—because I do need hope.

So whatever you’re dealing with, take hope: the glorious news is that the tomb is empty! Jesus is risen!

Everything is (ultimately) going to be alright.

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Shawn is a pastor and church planter in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational and embodied expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.