He Walks Through Locked Doors
A Battle Drill Easter Sunday Devotional
Easter Sunday evening. The disciples are huddled together in a locked room. John is specific about that. Locked. Not just closed - locked. Because they’re afraid. Afraid of the authorities. Afraid of what might happen next. Afraid that what happened to Jesus might happen to them.
And then Jesus is simply there.
He didn’t knock. He didn’t ask to be let in. He walked straight through the locked door and stood among them. And the first thing he said wasn’t Why didn’t you believe? or Where’s your faith? It was this: Peace be with you.
That scene from John 20:19 is where I want to anchor Easter Sunday.
But I also want to take you somewhere else first - a verse from Isaiah, written seven centuries before the resurrection, that I find myself returning to again and again. Isaiah 26:19:
“But those who die in the Lord will live; their bodies will rise again! Those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy! For your life-giving light will fall like dew on your people in the place of the dead.”
Life-giving light falling like dew in the place of the dead. That’s resurrection. That’s Easter Sunday morning. And God had been pointing to it all along.
There’s a detail in John 20 that most people read straight past. Mary Magdalene, weeping at the empty tomb, turns and sees Jesus standing there - and mistakes him for the gardener. We usually treat that as grief blurring her vision.
But John doesn’t include details by accident.
The last time a man and a woman stood together in a garden, everything went wrong. The door was shut and they were driven out - Genesis 3. The original closed door. And now, here in this garden, on Easter morning, the new Adam stands before a weeping woman - and opens the door again.
Easter Sunday isn’t just a miracle. It’s the reversal of Eden.
And then there’s Revelation 1:18 - the risen Christ speaking for himself: “I am the living one. I died, but look - I am alive forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and the grave.”
He holds the keys. Every door that death ever locked - he holds the keys.
Which brings me to the Easter question I want to leave you with today. It’s not a complicated one. Just an honest one.
What locked room are you in right now?
What fear, what grief, what past failure have you bolted the door on - hoping that if you stay very still, it won’t find you?
Because the risen Christ doesn’t stand outside locked doors and wait politely. He walks through them. He comes to where you are. And the first thing he says is peace.
That’s Easter. Not just something that happened. Someone who is here.
Happy Easter.
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