Thoughts on Resurrection

Submitted by Brooke Momblow

“Jesus set apart the week before His crucifixion to remind His disciples that death wouldn’t win, and His Kingdom would never end. But because they didn’t understand what was coming, they didn’t realize He was also telling them 'I love you' and 'goodbye.'

"Today, Holy Week is a reminder that God isn’t finished. Because even in those moments when our expectations crumble—hope is still coming. God is not done.”          

                        -Youversion

When Resurrection Takes Time

Ruth Haley Barton, Transforming Center

Used by Permission.

“The way of possibility is the way of going through.” John S. Dunne

It’s a good thing Easter is a season and not just a day because some resurrections take time. Like the coming of spring, some resurrections happen gradually; they are not overnight sensations. And yet somehow, we need to experience these as miracles too.

Fortunately, the Easter season (fifty days, eight Sundays, seven weeks—however you want to look at it) is longer than Lent because there are some areas of our lives where resurrection takes longer than dying. The Church calendar itself teaches us that “the implications of the resurrection—its explosive force—call for an extended period of exploration and appropriation.”* For us mere mortals, Easter cannot be done in a day.

To help celebrate the slower and yet no-less-miraculous resurrections we experience (or long to experience) in this life, we offer this poem from our beloved A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants.

Resurrection

Long, long, long ago;
Way before this winter’s snow
First fell upon these weathered fields;
I used to sit and watch and feel
And dream of how the spring would be,
When through the winter’s stormy sea
She’d raise her green and growing head,
Her warmth would resurrect the dead.

 Long before this winter’s snow
I dreamt of this day’s sunny glow
And thought somehow my pain would pass
With winter’s pain, and peace like grass
Would simply grow.  The pain’s not gone.
It’s still as cold and hard and long
As lonely pain has ever been,
It cuts so deep and fear within.

Long before this winter’s snow
I ran from pain, looked high and low
For some fast way to get around
Its hurt and cold.  I’d have found,
If I had looked at what was there,
That things don’t follow fast or fair.
That life goes on, and times do change,
And grass does grow despite life’s pains.

Long before this winter’s snow
I thought that this day’s sunny glow,
The smiling children and growing things
And flowers bright were brought by spring.
Now I know the sun does shine,
That children smile, and from the dark, cold, grime
A flower comes. It groans, yet sings,
And through its pain, its peace begins.

Mary Ann Bernard. From Rueben Job and Norman Shawchuck, eds., A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Nashville, TN: The Upper Room, 1983) p. 144.

*Bobby Gross, Living the Church Year (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity Press, 2009) p. 95.

©Ruth Haley Barton, 2011. Not to be reproduced without permission. Ruth is the founder of the Transforming Center. As spiritual director, teacher and retreat leader, she is the author of numerous articles, books, and resources on the spiritual life. 

 https://transformingcenter.org/2011/05/when-resurrection-takes-time/

 Arise My Love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueQCLrD-DPA