On sorrow.

On this day, this happy and Holiest day, I cannot let go of the names and faces I know to have lost dear ones in the last two months. I think about the ones that wait for test results, healing and comfort. And I pray. 

I pray because I have no control over any of the aforementioned. None of us do. Our only power is an imperfect love, compassion and forgiveness. Community. 

The message of the resurrection has perhaps surpassed another message of triumph: that of the broken, mourning community of Christ awaiting a miracle, but largely having written one off. They were held together by their grief. In their fellowship, they bore a burden too immense to shoulder alone. With whom else could they safely nurse their wounds? In following the carpenter's son, they had left the comfort of friends and family far behind. Now, they had nothing to show for it. There was no  kingdom, no Divinity and no hope.

We will let go of loved ones before we are ready. We will uneasily await medical, financial and employment news. We will watch helplessly as our world turns upside down. We will need each other. We will stand at the edge of a crowd and long to be connected, not in any functional way. But as in a meerkat kind of way. We will need someone to stand watch so that we may sit, lie or hide. 

If we are fortunate, our hands and hearts will be held by another. Our burden will be lighter. The darkness will give way to light, not by any means of our own.  In an unmeasurable, unknowable span of time, the stone will be rolled away. The grief we knew to be there, the body we helped bury, will no longer exist. Long after the world thinks we ought to have gotten over whatever ails, we will remember. Like Him, we will always bear the scars. But, with mercy, we will eventually breathe again. We will fight the sense of betrayal and smile. We will laugh. 

And until then, we pray. We pray and plan to be fortunate. We plan to be fortunate enough to lift up and to be lifted. In that way, we celebrate the second miracle of the Easter story: when we held each other long enough to see that Life had come.