Easter weekend reminds me again of the church service last year a week after Easter, when I sat alone in a pew acutely aware that I was alone, praying for relief from the grief that had enveloped me for more than nine months.
An echo from the week before sprang to mind: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” followed in quick succession by the familiar refrain, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that those who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The tumblers clicked into place and the door to healing began to open. My dear life partner was not reduced to ashes on a shelf of honor and memory. She was increased to whatever form our soul inhabits in the next, eternal life.
That has brought some comfort as the weeks and months go by. I still have my moments of melancholy as I walk around the house we built and miss my companion of a quarter-century, including the last six years we spent as husband and wife. But I think of her now as a living presence, not a haunting memory, and while I miss her physical presence, I have faith that she is out there and doing just fine. Perhaps she and Mary’s late husband have even become friends who chuckle over the love their mates have kindled as we rise from our grief.
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” said the stranger who met the women who had just found the empty tomb. The skeptic in me, the believer in logic and rational explanations, wonders if you could pull off a hoax about a common man rising from the dead. But the resurrected Jesus spoke to witnesses who never recanted their stories, never confessed to any hoax, and went to their graves — some of them in violent fashion — insisting they had seen the risen Son of God after he was crucified and laid in a tomb. Logic says one or more of them would have caved and admitted the ruse, if it was a ruse.
Instead, the story spread and became the foundation of a mighty faith. It’s too much for some skeptics to accept, and they dismiss it as a myth, not unlike the gods of Olympus or Asgard. But for those who believe in the risen Savior, it only makes common sense. With no other explanation and a host of witnesses, as astonishing as it sounds, it must be true.
He is risen. He is risen indeed.
