A friend admitted that with the closing of churches it seemed like resurrection is “on hold.” My initial reaction was “no way!” Then I carried her words with me as I walked the familiar neighborhood streets looking for signs that she was wrong—although everything in our COVID-19 dominated and isolated world is on hold, paused, postponed, canceled, closed or eliminated. What I saw told me that resurrection is alive and well. At least it is in my little corner of the world.
I felt resurrection power underneath the yellow tree full of pungent puff-ball blooms that each year announce, “It’s spring!” in brilliant color, both on the trees and onto the sidewalks below.
A prickly cactus bush is covered with more flowers than I remember seeing during any previous spring. It shouts with bright red, “See what’s possible!” Another cactus surprises me with its lovely pink blooms amid scary two-inch thorns, reminding me to look for beauty among the thorns of life.
And another rather dinky cactus spike wears a crown of tiny white flowers that boldly shout, “Look at me bloom!” It seemed like everywhere I looked, vibrant signs of new life and renewal and possibility.
I know that it’s not spring everywhere and that winter still has a last-ditch grip on some parts of the country. But I know that soon from the frozen ground, spring will arrive. It does every year.
But after experiencing an April three years ago where crushing grief from the loss of my daughter flattened my spirits, I know that there is light both within the darkness and on the other side. That suffering and grief—both our personal losses and our collective devastation—remind us that the cross is never on hold.
These days you don’t have to look hard to find signs of suffering and the cross. But maybe, just maybe, this year God is inviting you to look a little harder for signs of resurrection. Maybe this is the year that you, like Martha want to complain to Jesus about death and suffering—that Jesus was absent when her brother Lazarus died. But maybe this is the year you will hear Jesus whisper in your heart:
“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
