Joy

I love decorating eggs and eating chocolate. These are things that make me happy.  But the resurrection that comes with the bright rays of the Easter dawn brings me joy.

It's what I'm still lingering on, even as Easter has come and gone.  The end of my first year of seminary is fast approaching.  And hope is coming back where it had died.

I'm playing intramural ultimate frisbee this spring.  For the first time in likely years, I'm sprinting.  I've never been great at running, but suddenly I believe I can.  Old muscles are awakening.  Something in me that has been dead for a long time has suddenly become alive to the freedom of playing.

In the Gospel of Thomas, one of those non-canonical scriptural books, Jesus is to have said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes."  For a while, all that was green had died, and was left in piles of detritus.  The spark that comes from the resurrection of Christ catches this on fire.  Catherine of Siena said, "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."  Times that were once dark are being relit, as we allow all that was dead in our selves to become kindling for the glory of God.  

Resurrection means believing in a God who renews life where there once was death.  It means being awakened to old joy, things that had been set aside and left for dead.  Joy reanimates us all.

Let us look for for God on the loose, not among the dead, but among the living.