My friend posted this today on her facebook wall.
"There is HOPE, and in this hope is certainty. It is rooted in an unwavering, unchangeable, unconditional LOVE from a sacrificial Father who knows each of us by name. It is in that PEACE that I know true JOY. Joy not in circumstances, but in the assurance of spending eternity with Him. When it seems darkest...Sunday's a coming!!!"
I have had the blessing of celebrating Easter for over four decades and the marvel of the resurrection. Sometimes in our journey these last two years, even the promise of heaven has fallen short.
I hope that doesn't frighten you - I hope it doesn't.
I have written before that heaven offered a welcome reward to my two grandparents after living nearly a century in this old world. Their bodies and minds failing, a peaceful homecoming and loving arms were just rewards for two hearts who had given so much to family and faith, to community and country. I hope heaven released my father from the fears and demons he faced here on earth. I hope Jesus forgives me for wanting to see Taylor first, I hope his love is so perfect that this mama's heart gets to be whole again before I kneel in his presence.
We are Easter people. We are.
In my four plus decades of Easters, even as I began to understand the physical pain Christ endured to be crucified, I never grasped the gravity of the sacrifice he made. I am sure I still don't. However, I have a whole new revelation of what it means to be separated and how a God who loves us so must ache for us when we turn from him or don't turn to him. I know a deeper sadness than I have ever known, and if it compares to his on the smallest of scales, his is immense. This must be why "if his grace is an ocean, we're all sinking..."
It's because of that grace that I can hope that joy will return as I am weary of sad. There are mothers whose journey began before mine, who have not held their children in ten or twenty years. I cant breathe when they tell me that. I still just have to do one day -sometimes just one moment.
Nevertheless, I know there is hope - like Tina posted - "It is rooted in an unwavering, unchangeable, unconditional LOVE from a sacrificial Father who knows each of us by name." Thankful the kind of hope we have isn't depended on me, on us - but on the width and breadth and depth of a love that is as "far as the east is from the west" - and for friends who post about it and reach for it.
"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!" Luke 24:5-6
#golighttheworld