After the joy of God breaking into our world at Christmas, the season of letting that sacred truth saturate our lives (known as Epiphany), the recognition that everything is not chocolate rivers and we have brokenness in our lives (called Ash Wednesday), the season of Lent (deepening a connection with God), and finally Holy Week where we go from the enthusiasm of a parade to the pain of desertion/betrayal/denial by so-called friends, we arrive exhausted (perhaps physically, emotionally, and spiritually) at an empty tomb. This great cycle of birth, death, and resurrection is part of life. All around us, the soil is constantly being transformed as some plants die and others strike out tiny sprouts. Our bodies are constantly shedding skin cells as new ones are made. In our lives, constant change of family and friends and in our own bodies is a theme.
God enters into that cycle, participates in the dance, and on Easter morning proclaims, that now there is a new beat/riff. Now, instead of brokenness or fear or desertion being the final word, there is new life and promise. Instead of thinking we have this whole thing figured out like a puzzle, we realize there is more mystery than knowledge. Easter is the comma to life. Easter is the pregnant pause that suggest, "Wait...wait there is more." Easter is the profound, paradoxical truth that God is at work even in empty tombs of our lives.
Yet, that is scary. Because when the dead won't stay dead, everything we think we know is in question. Everything is turned inside out, upside down. There is a re-birth that is working within us even in the darkest days. I recently heard from a scientist that every atom in your body was around before we were born. Yet...yet out of some 6 billion people YOU are the only one who will have have your particular make up of atoms bouncing around. I love it! That is grace upon heaping helping of grace. That is good news upon good news. We need Easter after the Friday world we live in. We need new light after the deaths we experience week after week. We need hope when things feel like they are going you know where in a hand basket.
Easter is a promise...that we never quite grasp...but hopefully/prayerfully are grasped by. I don't think we ever understand Easter, but we can stand under a grace and love that brings new life from empty tombs and echoes of emphatic "yes" to life. May Easter be found in your lives this week as our still creating and dancing God moves in our midst with more than a trace of grace!
Blessings ~
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