Easter Sunday

Voices awaken me. Whispered words in the dark blue dawn. Or is it still night? I strain to hear.

Easter morning, 2009. Micah Berthold had died just three days before. My new pastor and his wife were struggling to bear the weight of this burden. Struggling to know what their good and gracious Lord would do with them now, so broken.

One man's whisper, just audible, "empty," he says. The horizon is just visible, the grass still does not shutter, thick with paralyzing dew.

We brought our praise to the Lord, offering him our thoughts, even our vicarious grief. We thought of sin and love's sacrifice. And we sang through throats choking on sobs.

I raise my head, still bleary from confusion and crying that had taken up the days since His death. No comfort came in sleep, just a place to lay the profound heaviness. We had entrusted all our hopes to Him. The loss we felt was more than that of a friend, or even a brother. We had lost the one who held the sky.

How did Pastor Josef do it? I don't know how he and Brenda bore greeting so many people. They remembered. I don't remember the song we were singing when one man said what we were thinking, "We love you, Josef."
"We love you, too, Bill," responded Josef as he and Brenda held one another's hands. Weight. Glory. Grief and pain were weight in our hearts. And God's glory was turning that weight into something somehow more precious than breathing.

More than one person now is talking, word is spreading. Something has changed, "Empty," "With their own eyes!" "She thought He was a gardener at first." Dawn is full blown day, and the word escapes every person's lips with more emotion and incredulous hope than I can bear, "ALIVE..."

"We shall not die," goes the song. And we sing it. And we believe it. Soul-cracked glory, the weight of the sky presses in. And we still believe it: we are ALIVE because He is also.

The moment when all fear is enveloped in hope--when you finally know you have seen the worst of it--it begs pause. And then, knowing, believing, seeing the promises of life unfold in the presence of my Lord, whose face I had despaired of ever seeing again--the soul leaps to joy.