“Weirdest Easter ever,” I mumbled as I rolled out of bed this morning.
Cloudy and chilly, the day felt like just another Sunday. Another Sunday without a church home. Another Sunday hours away from my kids. Another holiday that just feels upside down.
But it is the most holy of days and over the years I have come to realize that this is the day when we celebrate the most amazing and most life changing event ever to occur on this planet. And the greatest day ever to occur for us who wake up and live such ordinary days.
Fourteen years ago, on this very day, my dad passed away. After a lifetime of cardiac problems he finally succumbed to Alzheimers disease. The date, April 4, 2007, wasn’t Easter but just four days earlier. He was scheduled to be buried on the 7th, the Saturday before Easter. The dreary, hopeless day we Christians remember as the day after the followers of Jesus watched Him be crucified, die and be buried. Their savior was dead and all they could feel was the doom because they had not yet remembered Christ’s words that He would rise again.
Dad’s funeral that year was not to be. At least not that Saturday. When we awoke that morning, we were shocked and surprised to see snow covering the ground and falling at a rate that initially had me thinking I had awoken to January, not April and certainly not Easter weekend on Virginia’a Eastern Shore.
While Dad’s funeral was postponed to Easter Monday, we laughed throughout the day how he evidently wasn’t ready to be planted yet and like when he was still walking around the planet and loved to control things—HVAC systems, people and schdules, his car keys long after he was deemed a menace to the highway—he was trying to run the show again, this time from Heaven.
A cardinal hung around that 2007 snowy day. Just this past week, it snowed frantically again—in April—right before Easter. And a bright red cardinal hung around again. Just a little reminder of what I already knew and expected to come on these days.
Easter Monday, 2007, we finally laid Dad to rest. Even though I know he had joined his Heavenly Father the moment he took his last breath, five days earlier, it was the ceremonial end at his burial plot and headstone that closed the grave and the final chapter of his life here on earth.
We Christians have the assurance that because Jesus Christ rolled the stone away that ancient Easter morning, our loved ones who believe are no longer held captive to waste away in the tomb. They are celebrating in Heaven, with bodies anew, awaiting our arrival one day, too.
So today, I will visit my momma who most likely right away will not remember that it is Easter. She won’t remember that Dad died 14 years ago today. If I remind her, her response will be the predictable one that gets repeated often. “He DIED?! No one told me this!”
“Yes, mom, he died,” I’ll gently remind her, “he died and you were there when we buried him. It’s been 14 years today.”
She may agree or she may simply repeat that no one let her know that he was gone. But as quickly as I say the words, she will have moved on. On to chatting about something she has been doing inside her memory care unit. Or someone she knows who sits at her dining table daily but who she can’t remember her name. Or the most predictable question—what grade my grown kids are attending. And on and on.
But today isn’t about my daddy who passed away 14 years ago during Holy Week. Or about what my momma can or can’t remember. It’s not about the fact that I am without a church home, living in my childhood house where I now feel a stranger in a land I used to know. It’s not even about not having ham for dinner or Easter eggs in a basket.
Today is about the empty tomb and the rolled away stone. It’s about a Savior who foretold His death to His closest followers and promised them that He would return. They didn’t believe or rather understand Him initially. So much so that when He was crucified and buried, they felt gloom and doom. He was in the ground. Gone. Their way of life, at least how they knew it, was forever changed.
But back then, Easter morning came. And with the dawn came the realization that all He had taught them and promised would happen—had happened. It just took a little while to comprehend.
Isn’t that the way it often is? We are told things but don’t really understand right away.
Who among us today will say to someone who may not yet understand—did you know they crucified my Savior and hung Him on a cross to die 2000 years ago?
Who among us long after the Easter dinner is finished and the baskets have been shelved for another year will continue to tell others who may be confused about His death and resurrection and ultimate victory over sin and death?
As I awoke today, rolled out of bed and remembered the sadness I felt on April 4, 2007, I also remembered that Easter has come again today. Not just Easter but hope. Hope that one day I will see my dad fully healed from all his earthly afflictions. And one day because my mom believes even though she cannot remember, she will join him, fully healed and restored. As will you and I—if we believe.
So today, my friends, don’t just believe. Resolve to move from this Easter season to an Easter life. All things sad and difficult can be made anew in Christ who suffered on earth yet died to make a place in Paradise for us one day.
Happy Easter! Be blessed.
