Easter

Now burn, new born to the world,

      Doubled-naturèd name,

   The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled

   Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,

Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!

Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;

      Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;

A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.

      Dame, at our door

      Drowned, and among our shoals,

   Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the Reward:

   Our Kíng back, Oh, upon énglish sóuls!

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east,

More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls,

      Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,

Our hearts' charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts' chivalry's throng's Lord.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (Wreck of the Deutschland)

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So many things can take over.  And run us, and drive us.

Good Friday and Easter remind us that we have to “die” to those things that keep us from union with God, in order for God to do his great work of resurrection.

The good news is that God is in both the dying, and the rising.  God’s spirit, the sacred in us, enlightens us, inspires us and empowers us to die, to let go of the things that holds controls us and holds us back.  The Spirit, the sacred within us, helps us lay down the burdens of failure and fear that we do not need to carry.

And the spirit, lifts us up, moves us forward, to God’s new thing.

From death to life

From fear to joy

And this is not a once and for all event

It is a pattern, that occurs over and over again.

There is always something to die to

Always something to let go of

Always something to place by the side of the road, and walk away from….

Always a need for Good Friday

But there is also, always, an Easter

And God is always ‘eastering’

What is it that most profoundly controls you?

What is it that causes you the most anger?  The most fear?  The most hate?

What is it that robs your days of joy?  What keeps you from seeing the beauty of the mountain?  What keeps you from hearing the singing of the birds on a spring morning?  What blinds you to the extravagant beauty of the flowers?

What is it that robs you of any sense of “tomorrow”?

What sucks the life from you, and takes away any sense of hope

Any idea that life can be better.

That is what God will help you let go of

That is what God will help you die to

not just so that is gone

out of your life

but so that God can do some eastering

some lifting up, some re-creating

So that God can give you newness of life