‘Do not abandon yourselves to despair –

We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song!’

~ John Paul II

‘All new life comes out of the dark places, and hasn’t it always been?

Out of darkness, God spoke forth creation. That wheat round and ripe across all these fields, they swelled as hope embryos in womb of the black earth. Out of the dark, tender life unfurled.

All new life labors out of the very bowels of darkness.

The fullest life itself dawns from nothing but Calvary darkness — and out of tomb-black breaks the radiance of Easter morning.

Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life.

And there is no other way.

It is dark suffering’s umbilical cord that alone can untether new life.

It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace.

And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering.

My pain, my dark—all the world’s pain, all the world’s dark—it might actually taste sweet to the tongue, be the genesis of new life.

And emptiness itself can birth the fullness of grace because in the emptiness we have the opportunity to turn to God, the only begetter of grace.

And there find all the fullness of joy.

So God transfigures all the world …

Darkness transfigures into light, bad transfigures into good, grief transfigures into grace.

And empty transfigures into full…”

 

 

~ One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Sun’s rising after Resurrection Sunday on a Monday world where everything’s changed…

Easter Monday faith believes that in impossible darks, impossible light sparks.

Easter Monday faith believes that the tombs places of our life, are but womb places for new life.

Easter Monday faith believes that Christ tenderly takes our doubts — and says touch my scars…

This faith believes in stones that roll, in grave clothes that fall, in an Easter people who sing hard hallelujahs … because we believe in resurrections always coming.

:: Giving thanks on this Easter Monday for the dark places –

where a Sovereign God’s resurrection power stirs:

# 2381 … agoraphobia and old fears, old fears stalking

# 2382 … a broken friendship

# 2383 … foreign mothering territory

# 2384 … pain, and his friend despair, moving in with loved ones

# 2385 … the seeming tombs that He may make wombs

# 2386 … living resurrection on Monday… and on Tuesday… and on…

# 2387 … practicing Easter everyday

# 2388 … hearing the words of Christ everywhere we turn: Behold, I am making all things new…

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