This is a rather nontraditional verse to mark this joyful occasion, right? But it's such Good News, and as Paul puts it here if it weren't so, they would have called this whole thing off long ago.
Nobody would ever invent such an unlikely Rescuer-King. Nobody would have him born in a country barn, followed by fishermen and wayward women, dining with riffraff, healing the broken, upsetting the power structure, and then dying a criminal's death, abandoned by His followers, fulfilling well-documented but cryptic predictions from centuries earlier.
Nobody would have Him return to life to spend forty days visiting folks before ascending in the clouds with a promise to return one day.
Nobody would endure the horrific hardships suffered by Christians then and now.
Nobody would give this speech to inspire, redirect, and encourage a young church fraught with problems so similar to our own.
Skipping through the millennia since, nobody would live or die for this King unless every last fact of His life were true, including His death and resurrection and the promise of our own resurrection one day.
He IS risen. Hallelujah!
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, Thank You for conquering sin and death. Thank You for the promise of resurrection life here and forever more. Thank You for loving me. I love You. 💖
For more information on Jesus's resurrection, visit https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/10-concise-pieces-of-evidence-for-the-resurrection/