Three Ancient Days

i hope
that you all are feeling
Easterish this week

it's a beautiful thing
to stop and focus in
on the greatest weekend
in the history of  time

to pause
from our routine pursuits and preoccupations

and meditate for awhile
on those ancient days of atonement

from weeping in a midnight garden
to astonishing betrayal

to shattering pain and terrible alone-ness
impaled upon the executioner's tree

to the Trinity riven
for a finite period of hellish torment

death appeased

to His battered body washed and anointed

lovingly bound in fragrant linen

to the brutal reality of His death
so achingly mourned
by shocked and stricken friends

to an upper room
filled with uncertainty

air cloyed with fear

to glorious morning

a hollow hill
and covenant fulfilled

two simple women
astonished to find Him gone
even though He said He would be

two disciples running flat out
competing to get there first

breathless

astonished

as they shouldn't have been
to find Him gone

because He had said He would be

a Savior

bled and broken for you and me

risen for all time

maybe Easter is really the reason
i come alive in in the Spring

and my prayer for you
is to feel some of that life
thrumming through your veins

in awe and love
this weekend
as you commune with the saints
mourn His death
and celebrate His resurrection

and raise the roof with joy-filled praise

death has been swallowed up in victory


Happy Easter