An Easter Alleluia!

Easter is the most unique of all the feasts we Christians celebrate.  Simultaneously it is marked by both the heights of joy and and the depths of grief.  I have always thought of both of these as competing for the spiritual space in our lives.  Both are exceedingly powerful and all-encompassing.  At one moment our lives are buoyed up to beyond-the-imagination levels, and the next moment destabilized with sadness and emotional blindness.   

The late Thomas Merton, a Christian monk who lived near Louisville, KY, was one of the true American spiritual mystics of the last century.  Once during a particularly difficult period in his life, when was struggling with grief over his identity as a person of faith, he wrote:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”  (https://onbeing.org/blog/thomas-mertons-prayer-that-anyone-can-pray/. Accessed 4/15/2019)

All too well we know how to live in a Good Friday world; a world in which innocent people get killed and the weak get stepped on, but to live in a joyful world in which love is victorious over our fears, and where hope is stronger than despair, is a difficult challenge to our conventional wisdom.

The God-man Jesus has broken into our lives has given us that hope that passes all understanding; hope that flies full in the face of the conventional and contemporary wisdom. 

Good people of God, can you bear witness to that?  Anyone?  Can I get a witness?

As followers of the risen Lord Jesus, we are called to bear witness to the hopeful message which God has given us through his risen Son.  We are called to have the courage and faith to stand up in the witness stand of our lives to give testimony to the incredible news of what God has done by raising Jesus from the dead, overcoming the power of death, and bringing hope this world.

I pray for all of you to have an exceptionally joyous season of Easter.  May you experience the new life of resurrection! 

+Jay