Day 26 - Easter Sunday

Easter is all about resurrection. Dead things coming to life. Broken things being healed. Hope that what is wrong will be made right.

This year it’s hard to celebrate Easter with an abundance of joy. I don’t feel like rejoicing. I’m grateful for my redemption, but my worship took the form this morning of tears, of silence, sitting in my chair unable to stand with the others around me, mouthing the words to a song as an act of obedience, making a choice to trust.

You're rich in love, and You're slow to anger

Your name is great, and Your heart is kind

[there’s that word again—KINDNESS]

For all Your goodness I will keep on singing

Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find

Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul

Worship His holy name

Sing like never before, O my soul

I'll worship Your holy name

I haven’t reached resurrection in this season. I’m still staring suffering in the face. Yet I have a promise to cling to. What I sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what I sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel…But God gives it a body as he has chosen…What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power (1 Corinthians 15). I feel like a bare kernel, weak, stripped naked, nothing but the honest pain of my heart to offer. I feel dishonorable. Yet if I trust Y’shua and surrender to this season—accept what He has chosen—He will raise me to honor. He will turn this into something in which to be proud and confident—the Lord’s firm hand on my life bearing fruit to abundance. I’m not there yet, but I have to live towards that promise, draw from it the strength to keep going.

Easter means something a bit different to me this year. It means my suffering holds meaning even though the jubilance of resurrection morning has yet to fully arrive. It is here and yet it is not fully here. Y’shua has not yet come back a second time to right all wrongs and wipe the last of tears away. But he will. So I press into the cross. Lord, teach me to embrace suffering, in whatever shadow of a form it comes compared to yours. Death is not the end. Life comes. Eventually. If I have faith and patience to stay where He wants me to stay.