By Cathie Ostapchuk

Goodbye yesterday.

Not because it didn’t matter.
Not because it didn’t shape you.
But because you were never meant to keep living there.

Easter has come and gone. The stone has been rolled away. The grave is empty.

And yet - how quickly we return to what was.

We replay conversations. Revisit decisions. Rehearse regrets. As women who lead, we tell ourselves this is wisdom. Reflection. Responsibility.

But if we are honest, sometimes it is something else.

It is our quiet refusal to leave the tomb.

The women who came that morning were not wrong. They came looking for what they had lost. For what they loved. For what they thought was finished.

But heaven interrupts them with a question that still confronts us now:

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

The stone was never the point.

And yet we stand there - studying it.

The obstacle.
The disappointment.
The ending we didn’t choose.

We analyze it, trying to extract meaning, as though clarity will come from staring long enough at what God has already moved.

Resurrection does not invite analysis.

It demands a turning.

Stop looking at the stone.
Turn to the Saviour.

Turn to what is living.
Turn to what is ahead.
Turn to what is promised now.

Because resurrection is not only a new day.

It is a new life.
A new lens.
A new way of walking forward.

This is the invitation of BEHOLD.

Not to erase the past - but to release its authority over you.

Over ten years at Gather Women, we have seen this again and again. The women who begin to live well and lead whole are not the ones who have perfectly resolved their past - but the ones who have chosen, sometimes trembling, to stop returning to it for direction.

To trust that what God has redeemed does not need to be relived.

There is something about this moment after resurrection - that asks something of us.

Not more reflection.
Not more striving.
But a decision.

Will you keep looking back?
Or will you step into what is now alive in front of you?

Sister, you are not standing at the tomb anymore.

There is a voice calling your name.
There is a future unfolding.
There is life - real life - waiting to be lived.

So today, gently but firmly:

Say goodbye to yesterday.

And BEHOLD what is before you.