Waiting

By the time this message is sent, we will be in the waiting period between Good Friday and Easter. We know how the story unfolds, yet the stretch between 3:00 pm on Friday and the morning of Easter always feels long to me. There are preparations to be made: baking, decorating, sermon writing (!)...and yet there is a kind of stillness underneath it all, as if we are holding our breath. Will Easter come? Will it come again?

When I was a child in the Pacific Northwest I would help my father plant daffodil and tulip bulbs in the late fall. Sometime around mid-January I would start checking on them, walking around the wet garden and looking for that first green shoot. It always took so long to appear. When my own children were little in New York, spring came even later, and those green shoots took even longer. We would take restless walks in the park, scanning the dead-looking bushes for signs of blossom. I still remember tiny Frances' shout when she spied a bit of yellow or green. My own heart would lift at the sight: we had made it through again!

Come to church this Sunday as we get our first glimpse of the risen Jesus, radiant with life. God's new life pours forth, always fresh and ever new, for all of us.