Resurrection Morning
Very early, the first day of the week, The women made their way through the dry dark. Soft morning sunrise did not hear them speak, In deep mourning, their spirits silent, stark… They came to honor him who honored them, A pilgrimage to anoint a man they loved. As women of faith they had touched his hem, They had stood with him, watched him beaten, shoved. In Unknowing they approached Holy Ground, Wondering how to roll the stone away. An earthquake, an angel with words profound, Would forever turn their night into day. “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He’s not here. He is risen, as he said!”
© 2021 by Pamela Leggett
Rising
Rising. What images come to mind upon hearing that word? I close my eyes and see steam rising from a bowl of hot soup, or piles of dirty, leftover snow inching higher as new flakes blanket them. I remember the pinks and purples of night clouds parting for the day’s opening rays of a sunrise. But the thought that seizes my mind in this moment is the wonder of the ingredients of bread changing from a gooey, flat mess to a beautiful mound of bread dough.
I am remembering a recent video of my granddaughter making bread with her father. He has mixed yeast, water, flour, salt, and some sugar together and divided the sticky mass into portions for himself and for her. Miya knows how to knead — push the mass and fold it over. Then she turns the dough, pushes, folds, and turns. Repeat. Gradually, with sprinklings of flour, the goo becomes elastic and stretchy as the gluten develops. When the dough is ready, he puts the dough into loaf pans, covers them with warm cloths to protect them from drafts, and lets them rest in silence.
Helen Czerski in her book, Storm in a Teacup – The Physics of Everyday Life, describes what is happening in kneading the dough (p.19). While “stretching and tearing the physical structure, the living yeast…is busy fermenting sugars and making carbon dioxide. This dough is a stretchy sticky golden bioreactor.” Molecules of carbon dioxide merge into a bubble with other carbon dioxide molecules where they “will play bumper cars for hours.” More molecules bump into each other, expanding the sides of the bubble and causing the dough to rise.
But during these pandemic days, many are experiencing “COVID ennui,” a feeling of fatigue and flatness. We are tired of being cooped up and isolated from friends, coworkers, and schoolmates. We feel anxious about the future and yearn for the return to pre-COVID normalcy. We want the weekdays not to become all the same, but to experience “TGIF,” and to look forward to weekends once more. A friend expressed it this way: “I feel as if all the stuffing has fallen out and I’m nothing but a rag doll!”
There have been many a day of feeling like a limp, Raggedy Ann doll, when the days have felt very monotonous. Yet, there have also been beautiful, fleeting moments when an emotion bubbles up within and rises up to my heart, like a warm, hazy mist on a cold, dewy field in the park. It may begin as a sadness triggered by the thought of all the sorrow and suffering of those who have passed, and of those left behind. But coming on its heels are thin gossamer threads of joy and hope as I watch the whiteness of a heron rising up out of that mist into the sky.
Then I am reminded it is God’s hands, which are always shaping us. When we feel a heavy weight of cares pummeling and flattening us emotionally and spiritually, He is also working “air,” pouring living molecules into us. We may not be aware of God’s transforming us silently without fanfare. We must trust that in this process of shaping, God knows us personally. He cares for us, loves us with an everlasting love, and through His mercy, we will emerge with a new lightness of heart and spirit. For “weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5 NIV)
©2021 by Emy Kamihara
“You can have the other words – chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.” (Mary Oliver, “Sand Dabs, Five”)
“The Manse” as they knew you
you exist in one of Bepa’s sketches soon to leave its place on the living room wall unable to hide the cracks in the ceilings or wooden creaks in the floorboard a wicked charm you possess - grafting itself onto my smallest recollections 63 or “The Manse” as they knew you an extension of Grace where red bricks and playgrounds in the backyard became a second sanctuary for the congregation to feel safe and the grandkids to feel safer you’re where I turned crawls into runs and saw my youth see itself go moving out and moving back always familiar even when I wasn’t I still live within those late night summers on the back porch and happy times in the family room the warmth of the fireplace during a wintry evening when time had no meaning at all where you exist in the peripheral of Grove St. often lit by candles in the windows you would lift up your voice and quietly call us to come home the bitterness of saying goodbye includes no hard feelings your walls will let someone else in to expand the array of lifetimes held firmly inside of your fabric
© 2021 by James Leggett
Thoughts on Rising
When I hear the word “rising,” I see in my mind’s eye a large bowl with bread dough in it on the back of my stove, covered with a tea towel. Waiting for that first rise always seems to take forever. The cookbook says “45 minutes to an hour” (Don’t you believe it!) “or until double in bulk.” That’s the true timing. However, the yeasty fragrance hovering about the kitchen, as well as the anticipation of two golden-brown loaves later in the day keeps me from trying to hurry the dough along.
In the “before times” making bread was a special treat. It takes time at home to complete the task, and an ordinary Saturday with errands and house cleaning didn’t allow for the luxury of bread making on a regular basis. Christmas Stollen or cinnamon buns for a birthday breakfast were the usual reason for bread dough. Now that I am home so much, I can bake bread weekly. Many of us at home have turned to cooking and baking as calming tasks. For me, bread baking is especially calming; the smell of the yeast as it proofs, the feel of the dough’s changing texture as I knead it, the patience required during the first and second rising, the sure and certain hope of warm bread spread with butter is one of the purest and simplest joys of life — it is worth the wait.
And yet, I know that I do not live by bread alone. I know that my sure and certain hope is in Christ Jesus, the Bread of Life. I know that because He rose on the third day, conquering Hell, Satan, Sin, and Death, I live to serve Him and my fellow man. I am humbled at the thought of His sacrifice — “This is my body, broken for you.”
So, in the words of the lovely hymn, I sing humbly and sincerely:
In the morning, when I rise, in the morning, when I rise, in the morning when I rise, Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus, give me Jesus, You may have all this world, give me Jesus. (Traditional African-American Spiritual)
Thanks be to God for all His Mercy!!
©2021 by Susan Du Laney
Editor’s Note: You can read Susan Du Laney’s bread recipe here.
Invitation
Why not come back? The Savior has no end save light, no thrumming rage; music escapes God’s page, clapping timbers steady the roof, the muffled bell ringer’s ringing wakes the neighborhood-- Something’s going on, the Festal food is good, and free; eat, live. Silver pipes, tallow candles know their part; bring in your art-- What if a radiant, stained glass window depicts you? Read through . . . and thin lead linings hold you almost fast?
Inspired by Isaiah 55
Published on “The 55 Project,” June 2014, 55project.blogspot.ca
© 2021 by Sandra Gerstman
Meditation: Be Still and Know That I Am God
I spend most of my time as the protagonist of my life. My inner narrative revolves around my life, my triumphs, my struggles. It’s easy to get wrapped up with the daily minutia of events and small dramas that play out before us. It’s easy to be so busy that we don’t see God in our lives. But God invites us to make space for him. He invites us to stop what we’re doing and to be still. Psalm 46 reminds us that we are small and insignificant. The Psalm opens with:
1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
Wow, doesn’t reading those words just make your blood pressure go down? God is an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear. Even if the very ground we stand on breaks, we don’t need to fear. Because God is in control. And that’s why the Psalm so famously goes on to say,
10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
God calls us to make space for him. To listen. To let go of our self-importance and control. And to be still. If we don’t pay attention, we can miss God’s awesomeness altogether in life. So, I commit myself to slowing down and making space. Here is a very simple meditation that you can do anywhere. It’s often referred to as the “Five Senses Meditation” and will ground you wherever you are. It will take you out of the current of your thoughts and put you into the moment. It can clear your mind so you can experience God’s reality more fully.
This is how it goes. Take a few deep breaths. Then notice:
- Five Things You See: A bookcase, coffee cup, trees, lamp, a pet…anything!
- Four Things You Feel: What do you currently physically feel? A blanket, your hands folded in your lap, a breeze on your cheeks, the warmth of sunlight on your back.
- Three Things You Hear: What sounds are in your environment? Birds chirping, a car driving by, children playing in the street, a nearby fan.
- Two Things You Smell: Coffee brewing, a candle burning, fall leaves, spring flowers, lotion you’re wearing.
- One Thing you Taste: The lingering taste of your tea, toothpaste, a mint, or just the current taste in your mouth.
©2021 by Elizabeth Moulthrop
Rising
Ashes— Dreams are burned up in the thundered darkness. People running, hiding sequestered for three nights, mourning in closed doors and candlelight. Shadows of sorrow smolder in minds and hearts. Parting gropes through tunnels of blinded tears. It is there. It never goes away. An ache, it stays like a nightmare coloring each day with gray until the rains come, dousing the fires of fear and lost dreams. And then the sun rises streaming rays of soft touches of warmth welcoming the world in rainbows inviting spirits to join the day of jubilation in quiet whispers of love to Mary Magdalene, to others and to us. People run and arise in glowing. “Come and see … Christ is risen.” He is risen. Hallelujah; He is risen indeed!
© 2021 by Barbara R. Williams-Hubbard
A Grain of Wheat Falls into the Earth
Israel in the first century was a place of farms, vineyards, and pastures. So, when Jesus taught, He often used agricultural images. In the Gospel of John, He used the image of a grain of wheat falling to the ground: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24, NRSV)
Jesus is speaking about His own death; that’s fairly clear from the verses that follow. He is also speaking of the lives of His disciples, who were to “hate their life in this world [to] keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:25, NRSV) The grain of wheat doesn’t just die when it falls into the earth, though. It also bears fruit as a result of falling and dying.
The agricultural metaphor doesn’t completely apply after this, but we’ll get back to it. Meanwhile, Jesus died and was placed in the tomb, in the ground. His physical body did not decay, as a grain of wheat might seem to do, but on the third day it was supernaturally revived and came out of the tomb. Lazarus experienced a similar reanimation in John 11. The son of the widow of Nain was revived (Luke 7:11–17 NRSV), as were Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8:49–56 NRSV), Dorcas (Acts 9:36–42 NRSV), and a few others. All others who die, including us in time, wait for the return of Christ, the Resurrection, and the restoring of the creation to a state of health.
A grain of wheat, or any seed, is buried in the ground not to be reanimated but to be transformed. Maybe you’ve planted a seed in a cup on a windowsill. If you can see the seed as it sprouts, you discover that little of the original seed remains afterward. The seed is not reanimated. (“And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.” I Corinthians 15:37–38 NRSV) If the seed is held against the cup by only a wet paper towel, the seed will still germinate and sprout, because it is designed to feed itself briefly as it begins to grow. If you’ve never done it, give it a try this spring. Or you can search YouTube for something like “seed germination time lapse” and see what others have been doing during the pandemic.
While the seed is consuming its built-in food supply, it is also sending out two bits of growth: a stem and leaves that grow up toward whatever light is available, and root fibers that grow down into the soil in search of additional food and moisture. Thinking about the food available in the soil for growing plants is something that helps us appreciate God’s provision for God’s creation.
God has created a world that is extravagant in its diversity and beauty, but that extravagance does not lead to waste (as human extravagance often does). When a living creature comes to the end of its life, it often falls to the earth. Almost immediately organisms in the surrounding ecosystem begin the work of recycling the remains of that creature. Those recycling organisms may be large, like crows or other scavengers. Or they may be microscopic and living in the soil. In time, the plant, animal, bird, or insect that once was alive is reduced to resemble the soil on which it landed. In fact, much of it becomes soil. If you’ve ever seen a composting operation, or done composting of your own, you’ve seen this recycling of organic matter in action (albeit very slow action).
More people are paying attention to the soil on which a grain of wheat might fall, with both scientific and spiritual interest. Soil scientists and farmers have been learning that industrial farming, sustained by massive infusions of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, bankrupts the soil. Regenerative agriculture, which goes beyond organic agriculture, promises to restore the health of the soil, improve biodiversity, and aid in the efforts to reverse climate change.
On the spiritual side, Princeton Seminary has been running a farm. The August 23, 2016, issue of Christian Century included a feature article about the Princeton “Farminary.” (The article is available only to subscribers, but I may be able to provide a PDF. Contact me.) The students at the farm practice regenerative farming, and the cycles of life and death that they see in running the farm teach them about hope and resurrection and about providing pastoral care for the congregations where they will minister in the future.
Like the grain of wheat, Jesus fell to the ground. He died and was buried. Unlike the grain of wheat, He rose in the same body that fell to the ground, made forever incorruptible, and banished forever the power of sin and death. (I Corinthians 15:42–55) In that hope we celebrate Easter and look forward to the rising that will happen when we see Jesus again.
© 2021 by Pat Walsh