For one thing, it's cold and rainy. We've had a constant drip for days on end, and the ground squishes when you walk on it. Even if we wanted to slosh across the lawn for the traditional Easter picture, it wouldn't be very pretty. The few azaleas that managed to bloom before the monsoon have been washed off the bushes.
It isn't the half empty bushes that really bother me anyway, though. It's the half empty nest.
The Practical One didn't come home for Easter. She's flying home in less than a month for another auspicious occasion, and it would be, well, impractical to come this weekend, too.
I miss her.
Actually, I miss it. I miss having little girls in the home. I miss Easter eggs and Easter baskets and Easter candy. I miss Easter dresses and white patent leather shoes
I miss the days of boing boing curls.
That's what my girls called it when they slept in little foam rollers. In the morning, their heads were full of little boing boings that hippity hopped on their heads when they walked like a hundred little Easter bunnies.
I miss the boing boing curls.
I admit it. For a few days this week, this holy week, I actually got a little glum about all that empty nest stuff. I'm nothing if not human after all. I can fall to temptation just like everyone else, and the Deceiver tried very hard to make me do just that. He tried to fill me with a spirit of Easter emptiness by reminding me of my empty nest.
So I reminded him of my empty tomb.
Sure, things change...but the one thing about Easter that will never change is the only thing about Easter that matters anyway.
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, was crucified, dead, and buried. On the third day, He rose again, fully resurrected, fully restored, and fully glorified, wearing a flesh that was absolutely perfect... right down to the scars.
Because a Savior without a scar is no Savior at all.
Just think about it.
I don't just say all that stuff, folks. I truly believe it. Mine isn't a blind faith, either. Mine is a a belief based on sight. You see, I have seen the empty tomb.
Not His.
Mine.
I was dead, too. If you don't believe me, I can show you my scars. I know what it's like to live in a tomb. It's dark in there, and the scenery never changes. Oh sure, you can try to decorate the place, but it doesn't really work. No matter how many grave flowers you try to spread around, the fact remains that you're trying to decorate a tomb.
It stinketh.
But then one day, you hear the resurrection story. Maybe you've heard it a thousand times before, but that day you hear it for the first time, and you do the bravest thing you have ever done. You dare to believe that it's actually true.
And folks, I can't describe it any better than this: When you step out of that tomb, and the grave clothes start to peel away from your eyes, you simply know that it is.
He was alive then.
He is alive now.
He will be alive forever.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Christ, the LORD, is risen today.
Hallelujah.
*****
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