An Imperfect Easter

 

This year, so far, hasn't been the most fortunate in our neck of the woods. On top of sickness and countless trespasses against us, things haven't been as should be to help nurture children, to the best of our calling and ability, in the community God placed us in.

I remember the past two Easters, in 2024 and 2023, and how circumstances weren't good then, either. Although post pandemic, neighbors continued to pass away untimely: one woman shortly after we spoke at her gate on my walk from an Easter church service.

But despite every problem in the past, Easter remained the time of the greatest hope. Easter 2023 was a long walk to get ice cream to add to a gift to neighbors who were having fun outside, doing so despite every assault against the soul. And in 2024, the Easter season was four or five little souls at a brightly covered daycare table, really enjoying small ice cream sandwiches and quietly hearing and peering at an Easter book we had been reading in days leading up to our very simple, unbusy, unfussy "party" inside a classroom whose hallway is covered by a poster that witnesses, "I am the Resurrection and the Life."

But this year wasn't so. All I wanted for a few little souls' first Easter at our care center, wasn't running late all day and rushing to do everything while having to neglect the greater things because of chaos in our city, wasn't mounds and mounds of sugar, and wasn't squabbling and demonstrations against the taking of lives of cows.

Lord, help.

Oddly, feeling like failing to give faithfully to every little soul in our care this year at Easter, has put me even more in the mind of the sacrifice Jesus left for us.

God alone sacrificed not for cookies, cakes, crackers, or even bread alone, but for our very lives.

Through the love of Jesus, we aren't meant to be dry trees. A little like the tree that thrives, we live not only on elements like water, but from minerals that only death could bring to soils. Then again, unlike trees, the human soul is unique in needing complete proteins - and that in constant supply.

He sacrificed that we may live, and have life not sumptuously, but abundant in trusting what He has done, not only giving us His word, but nutrients from a much cleaner source than the worms and other prey eaten by many birds.

As God provided a ram in the bush, yes, there is such a thing as a clean meant to eat meat, eaten in moderation with thanksgiving to the God of Heaven and Him alone.

Where morality is concerned, the love of Jesus goes beyond anything we ask or think. One eats vegetables alone and is faithful but more weak, another of us decides against the taking of calves and chickens that are not fully grown; but Jesus overcomes it all.

Amen. And amen.