The Pattern of Resurrection

Imagine for a moment what it must have been like for those who stood before an empty tomb on Easter morning. After enduring three days of immense grief, those who loved Jesus most were surely fraught with anticipation for what Jesus’ promise fulfilled would look like. It’s no wonder they gathered before dawn to greet once again their beloved son and teacher. Imagine what went through their minds and hearts upon seeing the stone rolled away with no evidence of a man ever having been put to rest there, aside from a set of neatly folded burial cloths.

The last act in Jesus’ ministry was to teach us, through personal demonstration, what it truly means to be born anew. He did so by leaving a blueprint, a pattern that reveals the cycle of evolution in consciousness and expression.

Do you think they had ever considered that new life would look so different than they imagined? This is the question we are invited to ponder at Easter.

Born Anew

The last act in Jesus’ ministry was to teach us, through personal demonstration, what it truly means to be born anew. He did so by leaving a blueprint, a pattern that reveals the cycle of evolution in consciousness and expression.

Luke 9:22 says, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.”

In other words, we are to expect our divine expression in human form to evolve and be raised up again and again. We will outgrow old ideas and institutions that once defined and served us. We will disrupt our own status quo in search of a deeper understanding of the Truth of our origin. And when we do, it may feel as if we’ve lost everything, as if we are alone in the darkness of an isolated tomb.

Scripture also records Jesus saying that we are capable of all the things he did and even greater things (John 14:12). This is the truth we celebrate on Resurrection Day: the power to overcome, to persevere, and to rise into new expression.

Resurrection as a Pattern

Let the meaning of Easter morning settle into your own experience. Where in your life has something precious fallen away, leaving you to wonder what could possibly rise from the emptiness? Have you found yourself standing at the threshold of something new—not because you planned it but because life rolled away a stone you weren’t ready to move?

Easter invites us to recognize that resurrection is not a onetime event. It is a divine pattern woven into the fabric of our becoming. This sacred morning reminds us that the tomb is never the end of the story. In our moments of greatest uncertainty and surrender, Spirit is already at work, calling us forth, unbinding what no longer serves, and guiding us into new life—perhaps in a way we have yet to imagine for ourselves.

This article first appeared in the Unity booklet Release and Reimagine: Lent 2026.