My son Wyatt is only 5, but being typically male, he still has a bit of an issue with commitment. He told me, “I believe in God, but I’m waiting to make my choice about loving Him until I see Him.”

Wyatt’s hesitation does make sense. He wants to know what God is like before he trusts Him—and in Wyatt’s young world, someone’s face can tell him more about who that person is than any mere fact can. For Wyatt, seeing is believing.

For Jesus’ followers, what they had seen on Dark Friday gave them little reason to believe. Jesus had died a criminal’s death; His final words seemed to belie despair. Even Peter had surrendered hope and become a turncoat, a betrayer. All they saw was death.

On Sunday morning, only two people—Mary Magdalene and a woman vaguely referred to as “the other Mary”—had any desire “to visit the tomb” (v.1). The mood was gloomy, bleak. Most everyone had seen quite enough. Jesus was dead . . . gone.

However, even as the women came to the garden tomb, Matthew hints, hope had turned their way. “As the new day was dawning,” he writes, the women went to Jesus’ burial plot (v.1). It’s a simple line—dawn of a new day—but it offers another vision, a fresh hue on the gloomy scene. A swash of life cuts across their vision of darkness and death.

What the women saw that day was a radiant angel, shining like lightning. What they saw was a tomb empty. What they saw was hope and life, not merely dawning, but breaking forth, springing up all around them (vv.2-3).

Gloom hovers over our world. God has more for us to see, however. There is Easter to see, Jesus (Life!) breaking forth before us