There is room for your joy and pain on Easter
A final grow along update and a blessing for your day
Good morning, friends.
It’s Easter. Has the sun risen where you are? Here the sky is just starting to brighten and I have a gentle hope for sunshine at some point despite the forecast which predicts clouds and rain all day.
Perhaps the hope you have today is also a bit gentle. Despite your belief in the resurrection, you may just not feel up to shouting “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
Perhaps you didn’t complete your Lenten plans. Maybe you didn’t start any. Maybe your plants aren’t growing, maybe you forgot to water them, maybe you lost initiative as the season trudged along.
Perhaps you are hesitant to celebrate alongside other people, in fear of having your darkness minimized, reduced, or forgotten.
Perhaps today, as the sun rises and the birds reliably sing their song, you are still marred by the grief of death and loss. Again, you do see and believe in the resurrection, but your pain has not gone away.
I’m here to tell you that is okay and Jesus will not minimize your pain. You can hold two things at the same time. I think Thomas probably models the complexity of holding two feelings the best of any disciples. You are here Jesus, and I believe, but that doesn’t erase your wounds or mine.
There is room for you and all of your experiences and feelings at the table today, friends. Jesus is alive, and God is love, and we do celebrate the redemption offered through Jesus’s death on the cross.
And. And Jesus rose still in his humanity, still showing the wounds that remind us of his pain, and still inviting us into the story with our wounds, too.
Happy Easter to you, and I bless you as you move throughout this day and the season of Eastertide. May you hold some glimmers of hope that all shall be well, even if all things are not well right now. Jesus’s death and resurrection does promise that all will be made new, and we are honest about bearing witness to that from a place of deep humanity.
And if today is purely joyful for you? I celebrate that with you! Alleluia! I encourage you to hold your hope on behalf of those who need it most until they are able to have some of it too. Do you know someone who might need to hear that affirmed today?
Thomas wasn’t with the others when they saw Jesus and was like the rest of the disciples who needed to see him for themselves after the women testified about the empty tomb. His doubts were like all of ours. And Jesus invites us close, to bear witness to the wounds of death, while also bearing witness to his resurrection.
Two things are true. May the resurrection of Christ comfort you today. May you feel safe in the love of Jesus who has the capacity to hold that complexity with you. And on the days when it is just too difficult to hope, know that we carry each other. We stand in hope on behalf of those who have no hope, knowing that one day we will need someone to do the same for us.
I join with the women who were the first to proclaim the good, startling, unbelievable news about the empty tomb. Christ is risen. Alleluia!
May you know the love of the God who sees you,
Janette