Awaiting the Son Rise

A couple of years ago I was attending a spiritual growth retreat for United Methodist pastor at Kenlake.  The leader of the sessions had invited us to meet him at the lakeside to watch the sunrise.  The small group that gathered waited and waited and waited.  The morning was gloomy and the clouds were thick. We told ourselves that we trusted the sun rose somewhere today, even if not immediately here with us.   Just as we were getting ready to leave and go to breakfast, the sun broke through the gloom.

In the gospel accounts of that first Easter, when the Son rose,  gloom and thick sadness covered the first witnessses.  They came to Jesus' tomb expecting to find him lifeless and prone, flat on his back in death.
What they found was an empty tomb.  Jesus had stood up.  And depending on the gospel story teller, Jesus was  to be found out ahead to them in Galilee, or on the road to Emmaus, or showing up behind locked doors later in the evening.  Other places, but definitely not back in the tomb.

According to Barbara Lundblad in a 1996 article in Journal for Preachers,  a Dutch word for resurrection is "opstanding", which to me catches the dynamic nature of resurrection...up standing.

In a world that seems so captive to the gloom of despair, anger, violence and bad news, I take heart this Easter season in the One who breaks into those dark and lifeless places in our lives, our relationships, or world with upstand breaths of fresh air and hope.  God is not finished with us and that which is created just yet.   We may, though, have to wait through the gloom to witness the Son rise.