Happy Easter

            Cool and quiet, darkness reigns. All light extinguished and banished. There is tranquil rest after labors. Nothing moves in this place of silent stillness. Sealed, locked away from a world that holds its breath, matching vacant and motionless lungs. Battered and torn flesh wrenched muscle and sinew chill in borrowed darkness. Far away, hidden behind sealed and locked doors frightened, red-rimmed eyes shed bitter tears of regret. Here, the silence of furtive fear and disillusioned darkness reigns. None gives voice to the silent questions of how and why. Everything is motionless as creation pauses.

            Then, it happens. With scarcely a rustle, a diaphragm moves and lungs fill. A breath slips past open lips and everything changes. A heart beats once, twice, three times settling into a steady rhythm. And life flows, and not just through one man’s veins. Life pulses out across time and space. Tombs, recently cracked open as the earth twitched violently, give up their grip on saints that now walk home. This life, this new life radiates outward infecting all it touches with a new type of existence. The once almighty death is defanged. Inside the previously silent grave, new life stirs; life that cannot be contained. The new, yet ancient of days, rises.

            Outside hands that once flung stars into their places now gently cup a grieving tear-stained face, dispensing comfort and grace. These same hands that crafted human form now bear scars, scars that remind all of a burden born, mission completed, and a crushing debt paid. God came down, became man, absorbed our punishment, experienced death and rejection by mankind and His father. Now He lives and those same scared hands now turn back death. Life and light now reign where darkness once walked supreme. His rising changed that. His blood, once again oxygenated brings life; not just to Him, but also to His body. Now, all is new. Happy Easter.