Letting the Easter Light In

 

What is stirring and swirling within you this morning as you wake up?  How did naming and claiming gratitude as you laid your head down last night cause something to shift?  Or maybe you did not notice a difference.  This is not a magic trick that instantly or immediately makes everything better.  One night of naming a gratitude doesn’t mean you will wake up happiest person every for the rest of your life. 

Gratitude is a muscle.  Yet, not much in our world today encourages you to practice gratitude. 

There are too many voices clamoring and claiming that you are being Pollyanna or neglecting the suffering of the world.  Or there is that part of us that feels guilty ask, “How can I be happen when this person over here is hurting?”  We tend to think that our hearts can only hold one emotion, but part of letting the Easter light in is the complexity of life that is embraced. 

Remember last week, Christ still bore the wounds of Good Friday, even as he ate the leftover fish of the disciples.  Remember ambiguity and astonishment can both sing to your heart – hopefully in harmony.

When we give voice to all that is stirring within us, we start to explore and experience God’s presence in deeper ways.  When we let both frustration, fear, and faith sit at the same table and be in conversation, it changes the ways we live as well as the ways our minds are wired.

Sometimes our emotions are stuck back in Middle School, where perhaps someone told you, you could only have one best friend, or you were forced to choose who you like best.  We do this all the time with our emotions and expectations and encounters.  It is perfectly holy and sacred to both laugh and cry at the same time.  It is perfectly grace-filled to both name our pain and celebrate ways we feel alive.

I encourage you again, tonight, to name the gratitude of this day that is unfolding around you.  Not because these are somehow truer than the difficulties we all face, but because if we can find ways to see God’s grace at work in our lives such a perspective can expand and embrace more and more.  To continue to practice showing up and opening up to God who is already at work.  We can commit to working on this together this week.

Prayer: God continue to guide, for You are at my side, and even when I snide, help me find a way to open wide.  Amen.