Teaching: Pastor Erica Lara

What does it mean to hold onto hope when the season you are living in feels impossible to survive? This teaching invites us to consider resurrection not as a doctrine to be debated, but as a living reality that breaks through even the most brutal winters of the soul. Drawing from Mark 16, John 20, and the witness of the disciples in the days following the crucifixion, we are led into the raw aftermath of grief and invited to examine how we respond when what we believed seems to have died.

Through the responses of Mary, Thomas, and Peter, we see that doubt, paralysis, and retreat are not signs of failed faith. They are the terrain where resurrection meets us. Scripture reveals that Jesus does not wait for his followers to resolve their grief before he appears. He enters locked rooms. He shows up on familiar shores. He offers wounds as evidence. Belief is not demanded from a distance. It is invited up close, in the middle of the mess.

This teaching calls us to resist the comfortable lie that spring is not coming. It names the ways grief and fear quietly close us off to what God may be doing and how returning to the familiar can become its own form of hiding. As we consider what resurrection means for a city that rarely slows down long enough to grieve, we are invited to choose belief, not because the winter is over, but because the tomb is empty and the One who rose is still present.