I love Easter Sunday. We get up early, play songs, sit around the table and eat breakfast, and then we wrap ourselves in blankets and sit on the dew-damp picnic table at the park. We watch the earth turn, the light come spilling through the cracks of the world. We read the heartbreakingly beautiful Easter story. I invite you to share it with me today.

Jesus cries, “God, have you left me?” The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Mary sobs and covers her face, like people do when reality is just too cruel.
The sky sags, like a dead animal waiting for vultures. The sweat puddles on His face, and His fingernails peel and separate from skin.

God flips the light switch. Life is gone.

They go about their work like zombies, zoned out. A needle? Where’s a needle? Patch the curtain with frantic haste, expecting to feel the earth open from underneath you every minute. You can’t see a thing. This terrible fog has the world in a suffocating, dripping hold.
Go on with your work. Keep your eyes glued to the dust puffing out from beneath your sandals. Don’t go past that tomb. A nameless fear has you wrapped like grave cloths.
The sea churns gray. Flecks of foam and sky are tossed out from the rudder. The pile of eyeballs and fins and scales down at the harbor stinks rotten.
The light filters out. Wax sputters, drawing fire to the wick. Doors are shut and barred. Trapped souls lift fish and bread to mouths, eat mechanically. Children curl up in corners and try to pierce the darkness with feeble, scared eyes.

The soldier stands at the tomb, arms folded over chest. He runs his hand along his sword, flesh against steel. Was it only a day ago? When he felt the earth shake violently? When he was sent spinning through the air, torso slamming into the dirt, head exploding on a rock, fighting frantically for air? Was it only a day ago when surreal darkness girdled the globe? When, after looking at the white eyes and bruised and mangled body of the man they had tried so long and hard to kill, he felt a knife—point stab his gut? When he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they had murdered the Son of God? When he drew his own sword, aiming for his heart, but couldn’t bring himself to drive it home?

Was there ever such a sunrise?

Radiance flooding the earth, land and water and sky colliding in a sparkling kaleidoscope of color.
The women hurry through the grass clinging dew—wet to their skirts. Their lean brown faces squint in the sun, eyes unable to take in the light.
But the stone? Where’s the stone? An angel, dazzlingly white. The women fall on their faces. “Where is He?”
The angel’s face becomes alive with smiles. “He’s not here; He’s risen!”
They are running. Tripping and falling but scrambling back up and running again. Mary Magdalene’s face is blinded with tears. They’ve stolen Him. Bitter thoughts. They’ve stolen Him.
She runs straight into the arms of a tall, broad—shouldered man with cropped brown hair. “What’s the matter?” He asks, startled.
Mary sobs aloud. “They’ve taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve laid Him!”
“Mary,” the man says gently, eyes love—filled. One word, but it’s enough. She raises her tear—streaked face in awe, and gazes at her Savior’s face.

“My Lord!”