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| The Coming of the Son: Sunrise on Bear Mountain Eureka Springs Arkansas |
In the darkness that is winter and the depth that is Lent, behold, Easter draws near when the Light of the World will rise again!
I awoke to a glorious sunrise this morning and was immediately reminded of the imminent coming of Easter and all that resurrection means in this broken world.
As a society we are faced with change on a global scale not only in regards to our understanding of community but also in our finally coming to terms with our own culpability in affecting weather patterns and global climate change. We're changing as a country as we struggle to further define our mission, refine our vision, and find our way in a new global understanding while championing compassion, justice, liberty, and happiness for all. We're changing as a society as we continue to embrace greater and greater diversity, expression, and plurality of human beings, made in the image of God. And as that leads us to another reformation in the Church, the various mainstream churches "shuffle the deck" to offer new leadership hoping to either thwart or engage the challenge while seemingly the faithful wonder and wander in the darkness of twilight looking ever forward to the coming light.
The internet is ripe with folks who claim we are living in the end times and it's easy to see disaster all around us, in the form of mass shootings, an unhinged would-be American president, and the senseless bombing of communities and the killing of children around the world. It's easy to see disaster in climate change and then end of the earth as we know it, in the form of extreme weather patterns that leave communities and families fractured and in dire need of assistance. Yes, it's easy to see an end is near.
To some extent the doomsayers are right of course, this is the end, when the veil is torn asunder and hell is broken loose. However, if this were the end, I mean really the final end, what a pointless graceless world it would, be but it's not. The end that I speak of is the end of the way things were and not the end of things in and of themselves. It is like the end just before the Resurrection, the end before the Easter moment, the end of the dark night just before the return of the morning light, an end that forever changed the world. The kind of end that when you're in it, is black as night and often sobering if not darn right frightening.
We are at an end and the new day is dawning, just as the sun arose this morning out of the darkness of last night. The hell that is breaking loose is not unlike Jesus's descent freeing those in hell trapped by the grave. As a world, as a community, and as a church we are being freed once again from the grave, the grave or our own digging.
We're on the brink of wonderful possibilities. The world is changing in a big way. Our societies are moving forward even if at times they seem to be regressing, technology is evolving at almost light-speed even as we struggle to catch up with it, and yes, climate change is real but so is our ability to adapt, evolve, change, and thrive. Yes, these times are a changin' and change can be frightening but it is inevitable. How we respond to it is not, however, inevitable, it is a choice.
The question is, will we arise from the tomb and dance in the streets with the Resurrected as in times of old, proclaiming the Good News, or will we flee back into the familiar darkness of the grave, hiding from the coming Son and the new day that is dawning?
I think I'll dance!
