Five years ago, in 2016, while living in Beni, DRC, I wrote the following reflection. As I reread it recently, I realized I’ve neglected to look for small resurrections this past year. It’s time to open my eyes and my heart again.
On Good Friday I began rereading Nora Gallagher’s Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace. It was a book that spoke to me several years ago, as the pen marks attest. Winding my way through the book this second time, I’ve been struck by the theme that resurrection is act in which we participate. It is action that graces our lives through restored relationships, new understanding, open eyes, and healed hearts.
On Easter Sunday the priest at St. Paul’s Anglican Church built his sermon on the story of the empty tomb (Mark 18). He emphasized that each of us must make Jesus’ resurrection personal. We must find meaning in it for ourselves. We must each experience and know resurrection in our hearts and then reflect it in our lives.
God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or some combination, spoke into my heart, “Small resurrections. There are many small resurrections in a life.”
A friend once reminded me, during a very dark time, “We could not have had the Resurrection without the tomb” (Resurrection with a capital R). I have known many resurrections (resurrection with a lowercase r)—resurrection from despair, from anguish, from loss, from crushing fear.
I used to think resurrection was something only God did. But I’m beginning to see that resurrection is something we can practice, as Gallagher’s book title claims.
Lazarus comes to mind. He was dead for four days when Jesus called him back to life. While Jesus had the power to restore Lazarus to life, Lazarus had to choose to stand up and walk out of the tomb.
In these last couple of weeks, as I’ve tried to be open to small, current resurrections, My heart has softened toward an acquaintance and allowed me to see this person with kinder eyes. I recognized an answer to prayer to which I had previously been blind.
Even with a pandemic still raging, mass shootings and rampant hate crimes, and too many people in pain, small resurrections appear. The cosmos, nasturtiums, and basil seeds are sprouting. I’ve maintained patience over five phone calls while a USPS employee hunting for a missing package. People receive and respond to the COVID vaccine. The days in the northern hemisphere grow longer. The vegetable seedlings push through and thrive. I hold to faith and learn to hope.
God has power. We have to choose to live into that power.