We wait
This week I have watched lives disintegrate and have shared in the terror, grief and pain people have experienced. Once again, my heart aches as we wait.
But this season of waiting is so different from Advent’s waiting. In Advent, we are anticipating, expecting something new and hopeful. Our American culture holds that hope and expectation with joy-filled music, with stores beautifully decorated, with constant celebrations, that the waiting will be rewarded with many gifts.
Holy Weeks’s waiting is truly standing in the darkness of Mystery. It honors the reality of hopes and dreams being dissolved. It honors the many deaths we live into and struggle through while knowing that nothing will be the same again. There is no going back to what was. We wait!
Most of us want to rush toward Easter and its songs of resurrection. But to do that is to deny what resurrection proclaims: only through the disintegrations, death and emptiness can we be raised up into a transformed life.
This demands a radical faith, a hope beyond knowing how it will all turn out. We seek answers. “Where have you taken him’ the women asked as they rushed to the tomb. How in the darkness of early morning could they comprehend that emptiness can be an experience of Love transformed?
In Holy Week’s waiting I see resilience in people like no other time. We rise up to sing Alleluia even when our hearts are broken. “He is Risen” and we too shall be raised.
May all our empty places proclaim this message while we still wait for it to be revealed anew in our lives and through our living.
