(Easter is mostly over, and my newsfeed is awash in scrubbed faces, pouffy dresses, and coordinating outfits-of which I am a willing participant, don’t get me wrong. But there is still time for a meditation on Resurrection Sunday, because truthfully we celebrate year round. Written last Sunday, technically).
I’m tucked in the corner of a wooden pew in a small, brick-clad Anglican church in Knoxville, TN. My children, my wild ones, make quiet reflection an elusive, tantalizing goal on Sunday mornings.
This day is no different.
They gave us palm fronds. PALM FRONDS.
I had to leave the service multiple times to head off a five alarm nuclear meltdown from one of my darlings.
Between tight, calming hugs, sternly whispered corrections, and fulsome praise of both palm frond drawings and renderings of the green ninja, I am drawn to the window again and again. There is a pink tree overflowing with blooms, framed by the window’s edge and the sharp brick corners of the church.
(Thankfully I am seated by a window because I did not hear ONE WORD of that sermon. I’m sure it was lovely.)
“The certainty of what awaits transforms the waiting.” ~ J. Forsyth
See, I love spring. I love fall too, but that is a grief-tinged affection, with many more complications. I love spring because life is coming. Flowers are spilling over the stoops and bending low over rooflines, a riot of color and joy singing a new-old song, a song for the ages. A resurrection.
Green is creeping across the landscape of our yard, our forests, our hearts, rooting out the dead and dying.
Death is defeated, and life, eternal life, a life rooted in the hope of glory, life is coming.
I like to take pictures from odd perspectives. It changes the whole view. A piece of the story that maybe gets lost in the usual telling.
Pieces that are easy to miss in the chaos and care of an everyday kind of life parenting four small babes.
I can’t lie. I spent the rest of Sunday wildly discouraged over the 75 odd minutes I spent in the wee brick Anglican church.
But such is the power of the cross, the alchemy of resurrection, to change our perspective. To view the moments of our day through the lens of victory over death, to truly know …
Death is defeated.
To live, to live in victory.
And I can worship the risen Saviour through the cracked glaze of a church window looking out on a riotous pink tree.
It’s Resurrection Sunday. Rejoice, and hope. Hope.
~M.