Easter decorations

The outdoor Easter decorations this year are but a promise of what is to come.  Tiny buds line the boughs of trees like strings of lights not quite finished.  And the perenials buried deep in the ground are just now beginning to shake the long winter sleep from their heads as if teenagers not quite awake in the morning.

And inside the house, it appears I have but a half-eaten bowl of jelly beans displayed as a reminder of this holiday celebration.

This Saturday waits awkwardly between Good Friday and Easter, a day that marks the between-ness of the crucifixion and the resurrection.  It was the day when the disciples despaired and thought it was all over, this leader of theirs dead in a borrowed tomb, and they who ran away are now hiding behind locked doors.

And it is the day when satan rejoiced,
because he thought he had won.

But this day is not a time for hopelessness, but the shedding of our mourning clothes for that which is completely new, not what is to come, but the reality of who He is.

At Christmas,
celebrating the coming of our Lord,
we go all out decorating
and then take it back down again,
stored for another year.

At Easter,
bowls of jelly beans are consumed,
no leftovers
          but a ham sandwich or two.
What really remains
     is more than Easter finery
     worn for a day
  and hung again in the back of the closet.
For now we bear
          lives changed forever,
not looking for hope,
                     but living it.
There are no decorations to take down,
       but a newness within
                 His grace indwells,
       and the transformation begins. 
     
Nothing will ever be the same.

I came that they may have life,
and have it abundantly.
                   John 10.10