The sun has not yet risen above the eastern hill, and here in this dusty blue haze, I am taking the short walk from my porch to the garden gate. The morning air is damp, and the birds have just begun to sing. The true wonder of the garden happens when no one is here to witness it—while we’re on vacation; during a thunderstorm; and in this case, overnight, while we all rested. Today the earth smells fresh and new, the roots have done their work, and the garden has grown without our involvement at all. Fruit has emerged, flowers have budded and are ready to open as soon as the sun breaks through the trees, and I feel as though I am the last one to arrive at the symphony as it rises in a morning crescendo.

Sometimes, the most victorious things happen in the dark.

Here, in this early morning dirt, I think of Mary Magdalene. I think of her, spices in hand, eyes swollen from shock and grief, heading toward the tombs before the sun has even risen. Before the hills are dusted with that vibrant light, she is looking for Jesus. The women have risen early to care for the body of the Man who knew them by name. The Man who looked them in the eye and welcomed them into his followers, who did not snub the lowly, who wasn’t concerned with status and charm, but who instead tended to their hearts as the one who created them.

Anyone near her that morning would realize she is a woman in mourning, as the scent of the herbs would give it away. She is exhausted, afraid, and carrying the heavy weight of grief all the way into that garden cemetery.

Yet, as her eyes begin to adjust to the predawn light, where she expects to find the body of Christ she is met with an empty tomb and a radiant stranger. The flurry brings an abrupt change of plans, and after the disciples have come and gone, she is once again alone in the garden, fumbling still in the wake of grief and confusion. The symphony has already begun, and she’s just about to hear it rise.

It’s here she turns to see a man and thinks he is the gardener (John 20:14–15).

And of course, the beautiful irony is that he was the gardener, and he still is, but not in the sense she imagined. Here, the Gardener himself, the one who tends to all those he has redeemed, is not simply wandering around looking for something to do. He is a man at work with a purpose. Where once a garden was a place of defeat and sorrow, where Eden was broken and couldn’t save us, Christ has returned as the gardener to make all things new.

Christ—who knows Mary’s heart, her eyes, her tears—calls her name.

“Mary.”

We know the voices of the ones who love us. We each know the sound of our name when it rings out in a familiar voice. For Mary, this is the same voice that called forth Lazarus, that spoke the words “Talitha koum” with power (Mark 5:41), that cried “Tetelestai” from the cross (John 19:30).

Mary enters the garden in fear and grief, and in Matthew 28:5, the angel says to her, “Do not be afraid.” This call echoes from Christ’s conception (Luke 1:30) and birth (2:10) to here in the garden tombs, and Christ will announce this once and for all when he returns:

“Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:17–18).

Fear not, those of you who walk in the dark, who rise early and await the brilliance of the morning light, who long to be seen by a Redeemer who knows you by name. Fear not, you who walk amid the aroma of death; you do not need those spices to mask your pain. Here in our dirt, our grief-aroma-filled world, do not mistake him for just the gardener. He is indeed the Gardener, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the one who knows your name better than you know your own soul. Dawn has broken. The Gardener has faithfully brought life in the darkness. The symphony is rising, and we can join the chorus: Christ is risen, and he holds the keys forevermore!

Andrea Burke is an author (A Bit of Earth, Lexham, 2024; The Quiet Resistance, Baker, 2026) and is on staff at Grace Road Church. She is married to Jedediah, and they are raising their two kids, two dogs, two cats, a few strays, six ducks, and a lot of chickens in an old farmhouse near Rochester, New York.

Easter Monday, a day often overlooked in the US, holds profound meaning across the global church. It is a time for Christians to celebrate the ongoing impact of Christ’s victory over sin and death. In three distinct cultures that offer us a triad of symbols on Easter Monday, we see how the Resurrection not only transforms individuals but also redeems cultures with new meaning and purpose in Christ.

Scotland: Egg Rolling

Easter eggs are a big hit in the US, in part thanks to Scottish Christians who participate in egg-rolling contests on Easter Monday. Originally a pagan tradition meant to seek protection from hailstorms and plead for spring’s fertility, the Scottish church later redeemed its meaning.

The egg retained its symbol of new birth, but the rolling egg came to represent more than just the dawning sun after a dark, wet winter. It now echoed the rolling stone and the dawning of the Son (Mark 16:4). At Christ’s resurrection, the dark “hell storm” passed and the new creation hatched on the horizon.

As Scottish Christians joyfully see whose egg rolls the farthest down the hill each Easter Monday, they celebrate the rolled-away stone of Christ that ushered in an eternal springtime.

Poland: Wet Monday

For Polish people, Easter Monday is synonymous with Smigus-Dyngus (also known as Wet Monday), celebrating the baptism of Poland’s first official ruler, Prince Mieszko, the day after Easter in AD 966. Professor and author Andrzej Buko calls Mieszko’s conversion the “proverbial pebble that caused the avalanche” of Christianity in Poland and Europe.

Water rituals were originally pagan practices of fertility, cleansing, and luck. But Polish Christians found new meaning in them. Jesus’ baptism into the waters of death, his submersion in the tomb, and his reemergence from the proverbial Dead Sea was the pebble that caused the avalanche that changed the entire cosmos forever (Ex. 14; Luke 12:50). Christ’s ultimate baptism didn’t just inaugurate his new life; it birthed a new people—the church, Christ’s nation of nations (Eph. 2:19; 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 5:9–10).

Now Polish Christians visit friends and family on Wet Monday to playfully splash each other with water, reflecting on the joy of new life in Christ.

Eastern Orthodox: Bright Monday

The Eastern Orthodox expression of Easter Monday, concentrated in Eastern Europe but practiced globally, focuses on the brightness of the week following Christ’s resurrection. Unlike the usual solemnity of the Office for the Dead—a set of prayers and rituals for the deceased—this week is marked by joy, feasting, and communal celebration.

Genesis 1:1–2 says, “The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” How barren and bleak! Yet God’s command “Let there be light” (v. 3) brought his creativity and intellect into visible form. This light, still a mystery to scientists, both illuminates and fascinates us.

Jesus’ appearance was once “disfigured beyond that of any human being” (Isa. 52:14)—formless. He “made himself nothing [and] humbled himself by becoming obedient to . . .death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7–8)—empty. “Darkness came over the whole land” (Luke 23:44)—darkness. How barren and bleak! But on the first day of new creation, Jesus declared, “Did not the Messiah have to su!er these things and then enter his glory?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, the sufferings of Christ, the Light of the World (John 8:12), made way for him to enter the light of his exaltation (Phil. 2:9–11).

Bright Monday, the beginning of Bright Week, invites us not only to reflect on the Resurrection’s glory but also to live in its light—and let that Light live through us.

A Comic Redemption

The resurrection of Christ has brought not just a personal redemption but a cosmic one too. The various cultural traditions of Easter Monday throughout the global church remind us that Christ’s resurrection redeems and transforms cultural customs, infusing them with new meaning.

The stone-rolling, nation-birthing, light-giving Messiah has won the cosmic championship, and his resurrection life is now in us. We’re on the winning team—all cultures, all tribes—and this alone should bring a little more brightness to our Monday!

Rechab Gray is pastor of preaching and spiritual formation at New Creation Fellowship in Orlando, Florida, and a contributor to the book Fulfill Your Student Ministry (Rainer, 2019).

Easter Tuesday is an often-overlooked day in the Christian calendar, falling in the wake of the Easter celebration. The stone is rolled away, death is defeated, and hope is alive. Yet, just two days later, we often find ourselves back in the thick of the ordinary—emails, doctor visits, broken relationships, physical pain, personal doubts, financial struggles, and a deep longing for what is missing. Easter Tuesday invites us into a sacred tension: the paradox of resurrection joy mingled with the grief of life in a world not yet fully redeemed.

The apostle Peter was undeniably aware of this tension when he identified followers of Jesus in the first century as “elect exiles” (1 Pet. 1:1, ESV). An elect exile is promised to receive an eternal inheritance from an eternal kingdom but currently lives in a broken place that is not home. It is to these elect exiles that Peter wrote these words:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. (vv. 3–6)

Peter knew this sacred tension. God’s mercy has provided a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus, bringing an eternal inheritance that is being kept for us (vv. 3–4). It is in this we rejoice (v. 6), and it is in this very hope that Easter Sunday is such a meaningful celebration. But this day of redemption has not yet come. So Peter also reminds us to grieve (v. 6). Sadly, joy and grief often get pitted against each other, especially in the church. But joy and grief should be seen as holy companions in a fallen world.

Easter Tuesday is not an afterthought. Rather, it is a powerful reminder that resurrection is not an escape from the world’s pain but a transformation of how we endure it. Jesus rose, but the wounds remained in his hands. So too, we carry wounds: griefs, losses, pains, betrayals, and unanswered questions. Easter doesn’t erase them; it reinterprets them through the lens of hope. Easter doesn’t solve them but provides a foundation to embrace the sorrow we rightly experience because of them.

On Easter Sunday, we stand in the light of the empty tomb. But by Easter Tuesday, we often find ourselves back in the shadows. The cancer is still there. That financial struggle is not resolved. The depression returns. That relationship is still broken. We might ask, “If Christ is risen, why does the world still feel so broken?” This is not a lack of faith; it’s the honest lament of believers who are learning to walk in the tension of the now and the not yet. Peter reminds the elect exiles in the first century, as well as those of today, of this sacred tension—the same one Paul captured when writing to the Romans: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (12:15).

This sacred tension calls us to rejoice and weep on Easter Tuesday. Rejoice that Jesus is risen. We have a living hope. We are promised an eternal inheritance, which is being kept for us by the one who purchased it with his own life. But embrace the grief too. Sadness is the healing emotion of the soul. Sorrow is a gift from God that allows our souls to breathe and cope in a world that aches, longing for restoration. The risen Christ we celebrated on Sunday remains “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3, ESV). Jesus sweetly and powerfully meets us in this sacred tension, if we would stop, be still, and go to him today in our time of need (Heb. 4:14–16).

Brian Croft is the founder and executive director of Practical Shepherding. He is also the senior fellow for the Mathena Center for Church Revitalization at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and has written or contributed to more than 25 books on pastoral ministry.