Easter

This past week brought to my attention the memory and importance of ritual in our lives.

Tim and I attended a Saturday evening service (which I was expecting to be a kind of Easter Vigil). What the service entailed was actually the retelling of our salvation history, from Old Testament stories of salvation – to the raising of Christ. What I did not expect was my reaction. In the middle of the service they started taking down the dark paraments (the cloths that cover the furniture in the front of the church) and started putting up the Easter colors. I turned to Tim and said – “we need to leave right now’. I was not at all prepared to celebrate Easter on a night that I expected to be taken to the depths of sorrow that were experienced by the disciples.

For me there is great importance to the rhythm and ritual of season. Maybe it is a Minnesotan thing – but spring is all the more beautiful after a cold harsh winter. And the warmth of the sun is much more comforting and radiant after days of gloom and cold. That is like the Easter rhythm for me. There is nothing greater than to experience the joy of freedom after the taste of our bondage to sin and death. To be re-united with Christ after having remembered what it is like to have lost hope.

And when the sun rises on Easter morning, after the dark of the night – we are reminded that the light broke into the darkness. It is the memory of Christ death and resurrection that gives us pause to be able to rejoice.

On Easter morning – we went to a sunrise service on the beach. What a different experience. We got up early because I was helping to lead the service – but just to gather with a group of people some of whom planned to be there and some of whom “happened by”. And knowing the preparations for that morning happened in the deepest part of the night.

God works sometimes in the depths of our darkness. And when the light comes to shine on the changes they are startling, miraculous, and often worth the sorrow we have walked through to witness the story.

May this Easter season be filled with the dawning of God in your life.