Happy Easter, friends! The season of celebration that began yesterday continues today—and for the next SEVEN WEEKS! It is a season of deep joy, of reveling in the new life that is possible, of feasting on the reality of resurrection! And yet… if we’re honest, we know these fifty days won’t be all blooming and birth and beauty. There is pain—and even death—still here, too. We live in the between, in this tension, this both/and: Life has had the final word; *and* our lives are still marked by tears and loss. Even now. Even in Eastertide. Our temptation may be to lean toward one extreme or the other: pretending the hard things don’t exist, or living so fully in the brokenness that we don’t trust the signs of new life springing up in our lives. What would it mean to stay in the celebration this Easter season, while also naming the hard things? Not turning a blind eye to our doubts and wrestling just because new life has come, and yet: New. Life. Has. Come! Celebrate! Take a moment to notice how you continue into this Easter season this morning. What are the feelings coming up? What expectations do you carry? What do you worry about? What longing do you find in your soul for this new life ushered in by Jesus all those years ago? What seems unmet in you, even with the awareness of this shift in the fabric of the universe (and do you find the question in you: What has even changed??)? And what are you delighting in this Easter? How do you hold the both/and of it all? How does God hold it for/with you?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2023-04-10 13:36:28 UTC