The days leading up to this Easter Sunday have been dark with storms. After a tense day and night of tornado alerts, high wind and even hail, causing terrible damage in some areas, Easter morning has arrived cool and clear and beautiful. The ominous weather seemed a fitting alliance with the events of Good Friday. Shattered by the terrible death of Jesus, his followers had received his body from the cross and placed it in a tomb, sealed by a heavy stone. Then in fear and sorrow, fled for safety themselves. Everything seemed over.
The weather remains one of the last bastions outside the control of mankind. As much as we attempt to insulate ourselves from its vast power, we are reminded over and over again, just how fragile our lives are in comparison. It cannot be contained. And no matter how much we may mathematically understand why it happens as it does, it remains beyond our capacity to manipulate. It exists wondrously just as it is.
The night before he was taken into custody, Jesus took his disciples and went to pray, asking them to stand watch and wait for him. But they, worn by the events of the week, soon fell asleep as Jesus wrestled with his knowledge of the coming days and the Roman soldiers led by Judas, arrived to seize him.
In the aftermath of any severe weather, there comes a moment of pause. The storm has passed and the interlude behind it has a feeling of 'no time'. Sometimes watching victims of these times, you can see them experiencing this. Their lives as they knew them, are over. The future is unknown and yet, here they are, existing in the present. You can see them struggling to take in what has happened. I imagine that is something of what the disciples felt as they crept away into the night after burying Jesus and huddled together in safe houses through the Saturday that followed.
When we are brought low and broken open by the events of our lives, this same pause arrives. Captured and stunned by life, we exist in a no man's land...the place between. I am thinking this morning how holy this space is. Is part of the miracle of Easter morning the awareness of the translucent doorway that is always there but which are eyes have ceased to recognize? When we come upon the empty tombs in our own lives is there also an angel waiting within for us? Is the good news the realization that the despite the terrible events, the stone has been rolled away and the door will always be open to pass through to a new life?
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