light CORY MORSE
rights or even the option of sending cards, pictures or let- ters. I do pray regularly for them and can only hope that we’ll reunite when they are adults. Yes, December distracts us from darkness. But it’s pos- sible, no matter how bleak our circumstances, for the aura of Christmas to remain with us through that seemingly interminable stretch culminating in Easter. Certainly we reflect during Lent on our sins and short- comings—the very sins and shortcomings from which Jesus’ atoning death has already liberated us. And in my case, that year in particular I grieved a different dark- ness—the effects of sin that so brutally impacted family members beyond myself.
Far from wringing our hands in guilt, shame and despair during Lent, though, we are called with the gradu- ally awakening light to revel in the decisive victory over darkness, sin and death we will soon celebrate. A few years ago my pastor used a sermon illustration that has stuck with me: On the morning of a first snow, he spotted a flock of snow geese flying south in “V” forma- tion. Several months later, on the first warm spring day (which happened that year to be the morning after Easter), he spied another flock en route to points north. Could’ve been the same geese. Who knows?
During Lent, God calls us with gradually awakening light, says Donna Huisjen, a Michigan author who has known her share of late-winter darkness.
What we do know is that God controls the times and seasons, coordinating animal migrations with shift- ing weather patterns. On Thanksgiving we recall God’s blessings through the prior year’s growing season. And what better time than Easter—Resurrection Sunday—to celebrate the unfailing annual rejuvenation of all things living?
Easter isn’t primarily about the circle of life or reawak- ening nature, of course, although these realities fit the theme of new life in Christ. What Christ did in conquer- ing sin and death is all about renewal and transformation: of our lowly bodies and of the heavens and Earth, too, although we don’t yet fully realize these changes. For what minor or major transformations do you long with regard to your own resurrection body? For what do you yearn with regard to your loved ones from whom you might be estranged in one way or another? For you, what does the ever increasing daylight during Lent have to do with the glorious sunrise—er, let’s make that “Sonrise”— of Easter morning? Your answers will make all the differ- ence, both in this world and in the next.
March 2012 29
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