Easter Eve

It is Easter Eve. I walked up to the cross atop Mount Rubidoux this morning and came home in a pensive mood. I took some time to ponder on this Holy Saturday.

And sometimes this world is too noisy. Harsh. The older I get, the more introverted I become. No, really. It's true.

And sometimes we need to be silent.

It was the eve of the Sabbath. The others had fled in fear. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus retrieved Jesus' body, wrapped it, and laid Jesus in a garden tomb. The tomb was sealed.

And what of that Sabbath? What of the disciples and their dismay? I wonder if Jesus' words came flooding back to their memory. He told them that they would weep and mourn while the world rejoices, but their grief would turn to joy.

I wonder if, in their devastation, they thought he was a liar. Because how could joy replace this grief? How could anything good, anything redemptive, ever be birthed from death?

And we know what they did not. We know how this story ends.

So tomorrow, I will put on my pretty Easter dress and when someone says to me, "He is Risen!" I will reply, "He is Risen, indeed!" And I will sing hymns and songs of praise.

But, I will not forget the dark, Black Saturdays where we struggle with all of the in-betweens of this life. Where in the darkness, in the waiting, in the doubting, we come to find a faith birthed out of grief.

You see, there is no other way to get from Friday to Sunday with all of its revelry, than through Saturday.

Of Rain and Roots

I told the mister that rain was coming. You see, I like to check the weather forecast via the internet several times a day. I check out the current weather, tomorrow's forecast, and even take a peek at the ever-changing ten day forecast.

So, after the drizzle early Tuesday quickly dissipated, the mister, while running errands together, would look at the sunny sky with fluffy clouds and say things, like: "Boy, I'm sure glad it was going to rain." {lucky for him, I can appreciate a snarky sense of humor}

But we needed the rain. I needed the rain.

So let’s know Him; let’s strive to know the Eternal.
    As surely as the sun rises, He’ll come out from His lair.
As surely as the rains come each year—
    those spring rains that drench the earth—He’ll come back to us. Hosea 6:3

And I had so many plans to dig deep this Lent. And, per usual, I end up feeling like a failure because I don't. 

After church on Sunday, I took Mason outside for a walk. We looked at the flowers and the bricks. We came to a mature tree that had some leaves on the ground. I stooped down, Mason's hand in mine, to pick up one of the leaves that had fallen and was taken aback by the roots of this particular tree. The root system was a jumbled mess of a mass of roots with roots above the ground, beneath the ground, and overlapping every which way. 

And I immediately thought that I was like this tree. I saw these wayward roots as a woven tapestry of grace.

Because my life isn't always rooted in Him like I need it to be, like we need the rains to sustain us. My roots don't always grow straight down by the streams. They are not always established. They are a mess.

And it's messy, this life. It speaks of the grace we so desperately need. And sometimes I just clumsily feel my way through it and end up back at the surface when I should be digging deep. Going low to the places that matter. But, there is still life in the learning and growing, and such beauty in that tapestry of grace.

Some time during the night, I woke up to the sound of rain. It was the rain in which I was waiting; the rain my heart was anticipating. It was such a lovely sound. I sleepily smiled and mouthed, "Thank you."

To me, it sounded like grace.