It's Holy Week... and we celebrate the miracle and the sacrifice of being Easter people
I love it when our pastor reminds of this fact, his voice often cracking with a respectful sense of sacrifice, joy and humility. In the dawn of our grief, I quoted those words in what I wrote for Taylor's funeral. I believe them - the words - that we are Easter people.
My friend, Marcie and Taylor's sophomore English teacher, shared this blog with me today...http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Frickwarren.org%2Fdevotional%2Fenglish%252fgod-s-easter-promise-for-you%3Froi%3Decho7-23845129064-46734015-22825cfc683f120b0a4e9d5904b65ded&h=-AQF8YniyAQGOOYX4KOmR76Qi5MJTf3LAaJsJQNJMMsuFWA
These sentences move something within me: "One day your heart will stop. That will be the end of your body. But it will not be the end of you. God made you to last forever. That’s why you often have a feeling there’s more to life than this. Jesus made this amazing promise in John 11: 25-26: 'I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die”'(NIV)."
I believe these words. I cannot remember a time in my life without these truths. Still....
Here's what I have to say though because the truth is as dangerous as it is beautiful. As fiercely as I cling to my faith in the resurrection and eternal life, I fight against spending the rest of my natural life on this earth without my daughter. As natural as it is to believe in heaven, it is as unnatural to believe our daughter is gone. Believing in the promise of heaven doesn't make being without Taylor okay. I still rail against it. I still audibly say, "Baby girl... where are you!!!" I still feel like I am going to cave in, or turn inside out, or dry up and blow away - believing in heaven, in the sacrifice that Christ made for each of us, doesn't change those feelings for me right now. I cannot see a time when it will.
However, when I look at the beauty a threatening spring sky offers, I see the harmony of truth and danger; I see the mystery behind the verse, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1).
I look at the sky and hear my cousin, Jill, saying, "God let her paint again.". And in acknowledging the beautiful reality that Taylor is in heaven, I face the danger of an empty anger.
I guess the perfect timing of tonight's sunset - where the eastern sky fills itself with accumulating clouds at exactly the moments when the western sun throws its light to refract and reflect off of each billowing layer creating a colorful Easter canvas - offers us the assurance to hope for harmony among the elements of truth and danger.
#golighttheworld