I weave through the rows of ornate headstones, soaking in the quiet stillness of the historic cemetery close to my house. Today, my heart feels as heavy as these enormous slabs of stone.
I am grieved this Holy week. Never before has my generation faced an Easter like this, where fear and suffering reign supreme and the threat of death lurks persistently in the shadows. The heaviness of it all blankets the usual celebrations, threatening to suffocate the joy out of this sacred season.
Yet sometimes we forget that there was death, too, that very first Easter. A mother looked upon her son, close to death on that wooden tree, and cried; the disciples watched a friend closer than a brother breathe His last. How they grieved, then; how they doubted. How they must have implored the God of heaven to act—to DO something, anything. How heavy their hearts must have been as they looked upon the stone that sealed the entrance to His tomb.
But then there was Sunday; when death gave way to life and the body in the tomb breathed once more.
Even here, in this quiet, somber place, with the shadow of death all around, life bursts through. From the trumpeting yellow daffodils springing wildly from cracks in the dirt to a blossom tree erupting in a shower of pink and white, creation sings its beautiful melody. A triumphant hallelujah rising from the silence of the grave.
No matter how impossible, how unfathomable, how painful it seems right now; life always wins.
This is the undeniable power of resurrection Sunday. Light from darkness, hope from despair, redemption from brokenness, and life— life eternal—from that which once was dead.
Easter may look a lot different this time round, our usual traditions on pause, but this year more than ever we need to look to the power of the cross. We are in desperate need of a Savior in whom to place our hope—and spoiler alert, it’s not the bunny.
“In him [Jesus] was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5, NIV).