A HAPPY EASTER to you all!
There are some stories that I never get tired of hearing and whose novelty for me never wears off. Perhaps the greatest of these is the Easter story.
Part of the endless fascination for me of the "Easter" events described in such different terms by each of the gospel writers is the sheer mystery of it all. Not even the gospel writers themselves could really say exactly what happened, because no one witnessed the resurrection itself.
That doesn't bother me. On the contrary, it comforts me. It leaves room for faith as well as wonder. It is one of those mysteries which the more you know about it, the more mysterious it becomes. The deeper you plunge into it, the deeper it seems.
I guess the word is unfathomable.
But, you know, part of the reason why no one knows exactly what happened on that "third day" is that the resurrection took place "while it was still dark." The sun hadn't even come up by the time Mary and the other women got to the tomb to find the stone rolled away.
Could that in itself be somehow significant?
Of course, Jesus seems to have had a habit of getting up before daybreak to go off into some lonely place to pray but this takes 'getting up early' to a new dimension altogether!
What I like most about this seemingly insignificant detail of the Easter narrative though is that it reminds me of a truth we find all through the Bible... the light shines IN the darkness and the darkness can't put it out, and eventually the light grows to banish the darkness itself. It's the triumph of future hope over present circumstance.
And isn't that something we all need these days?
2 comments:
Happy Easter to you too!
It's so easy to find yourself in the 'darkness'; when faith is weak and you wonder if you have even a flicker?. It is also comforting in a way that Jesus also experienced this - " Father , why have you forsaken me?" But the Easter story can rekindle this faith and let the light shine for us again. It certainly has for me! Happy Easter!
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