Living Through Saturday
This was a first and last Easter for me. It was my first Easter without Terry and my last Easter as pastor of Port Huron First United Methodist Church. The metaphor of Lent and Easter has been much on my mind all this past week. I began my Easter message to the congregation by admitting that if ever I personally needed an Easter experience it would be now. I do not mean to trivialize the magnificence of Easter as a part of God's great work in the world, but if I cannot embrace Easter on a personal level, how will I ever appreciate it on a mysterious and divine level?
Thinking about these things it came to me that in the flow of the Easter story I remain stuck living in Holy Saturday. Good Friday and its loss has not yet been replaced by the triumphal renew of the resurrection. I am in the in between place waiting for the dawn of a new day. Terry's loss remains a searing experience. I trust that God will direct me toward the day of resurrection, but for now I wait between what was and what is yet to come.
In this in between place I am becoming slowly aware that when that renewal emerges it will not look anything like what went before. Encountering the risen Christ the Disciples had to accept that the resurrected Jesus was different than the Jesus with whom they walked through Galilee. Easter does not put things back they way they were. Easter is the crossing of a threshold into a new experience. This time in Saturday helps me get used to the fact that my life is now different. The past goes with me, but the future will be a new creation.
If, as I firmly believe, faith is defined as living with a radical trust in God, then I am content with this Saturday experience. I trust that given time God will direct me toward a renewal of purpose and love. I trust that God will teach me how to honor the past and hang on to my love for Terry while making room for the rest of my life to proceed. I know this. I must trust in God to see me through this Saturday moment. Left on my own I would waste the experience watching old movies and reruns of Myth Busters.
Dave Gladstone