Orange County is a brilliant and breathtaking shade of yellow right now. The mustard seeds have taken flight all over the hillsides and have lit up the vast expanses of space with a brightness I wish would last all year long.
I was at Costco the day after all the martyrs went to see the face of God while waving their palms and singing Hosanna in Egypt. In the morning I sobbed over the heart-wrecking photograph of the bloody pew and I let it change me in the way that you can choose to let those things change you, then I took a drive to buy fruit, beef jerky, and some salads. I met a lady named Lindalee who gave me a generous sample pour of Jose’s coffee in a small styrofoam cup, and I briefly shared how sad I was about the world upon her inquiry into how my day was going.
She echoed my sentiments about how dark and sad and scary the world is...and then she stated quite confidently, “Don’t worry, we’re all in the light,” as she bent down to get another pot of coffee to pour out and hand out. It was the second time something had taken my breath away that day and it wasn’t even noon.
Don’t worry...we’re all in the light.
We celebrated the Resurrection on Sunday and it was as glorious and wonderful as ever, then Monday came along with the harsh remembering that in the everyday world one can feel quite deeply like they are swimming around in a bunch of muck...angry people in a world lost to sin and evil prowling around the corner at every turn, every click, every channel...
I am always having to surrender to letting the glory of Easter teach me things.
Because if I quiet and still myself...if I stop just long enough to let it do such a careful and holy thing...it teaches me that in the midst of the darkness there is a call that has been placed on my life, on our lives as Christians...the call to carry the light of the Resurrection.
We get the opportunity to seize this responsibility...our honorable and majestic responsibility, really, to carry this light like a flaming torch through the dark, damp, cold streets of this world and let that torch shine light into the broken and cracked windows through which the light has perhaps never shone. We get to carry the light of this triumph over all the dark and scatter it like mustard seeds all over the fields of sorrow surrounding us...
As I drive down the streets and absorb the beauty of all the yellow I continue to let Easter teach me...I reflect and remember that I believe in a God who is light, a God who broke through and has not ceased breaking through all the cracks and the darkness and who gently holds the shattered pieces of our broken and sorry world and that Saint John was not speaking in analogy when he penned it down...
God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)
You can carry the light. You can scatter the light. You are a child of the Father of lights.
We can choose to live like the Resurrection was a nice story that didn’t really change or redeem anything or we can choose to dig into the remembering that the Resurrection was as real as anything has ever been and that it changes and redeems everything...and that while we forge through the muck, one foot ahead of the other, we are in the light...that I am a daughter of the Father of lights, who does not ever change like the shifting of the shadows in the day…
And as I walk away from her sample table, pushing my cart, cup of coffee in my hand, I say it out loud like I believe it because I do…
Yes, Lindalee. Yes, we are. We are all in the light.
Photograph : Trini Crocker, trinicrockerphotography.com.