It is early spring and nature is reflecting the super-natural. As I write, tomorrow is Good Friday, Easter is three days away and the signs are all around – bright colors, chocolate bunnies, candy eggs, those little yellow marshmallow bird things, bright and happy Gap commercials…
We love Easter. We love spring. We love to talk about the hope and new life of resurrection – and that’s good and right.
But the part that I tend to want to forget or ignore is that for there to be resurrection and new life there has to be death and loss of life – and death is nearly always horrible.
Death won’t be ignored and can’t be denied. It takes many shapes besides the loss of physical life. We experience the death of dreams, the break up of family or a relationship, a child gone astray, the loss of a job or physical or emotional health, fill in the blank.
The rhythm, as we are reminded every year, is this:
“Good“ Friday, holy Saturday, Easter (resurrection) Sunday.
Friday- is dark and difficult, it is tearful and rife with loss and sadness and struggle and confusion and….death. Friday is decidedly not bright and colorful and pastel. Friday leads to…
Saturday- waiting, silence, nothing, confusion, uncertainty, more waiting, “How long?“, “When?!“.
And out of this tomb comes…
Sunday- Easter! Resurrection, new life, hope revealed, redemption, re-newal (new again-from the same broken material).
Psalm 30:5 says, “Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
There’s an old sermon that announces, “It’s Friday, but Sundays comin’!”
That is the rhythm, the promise. This is what even the trees outside my window are saying.
I can’t wait for spring, for resurrection, for renewal.
Thanks be to God that scripture and nature and history are full of the stories and examples of this truth.
Prayer: Good Father, would you help us to recognize the rhythm of resurrection, to enter and learn from the struggle and pain of our Fridays. Would you create a hunger and hope in us as we wait and wonder in the silence of our Saturdays. And would You then help us to embrace and rejoice in and live out of the new life of Easter… all to Your glory.
written by: Steve Moldrup
