‘For
there is hope for a tree,
if it is
cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that
its shoots will not cease.’
There seems to be a
theme throughout the Bible of death and darkness coming before transformation
and new life. Things seem to reach rock bottom before the most unexpected new
hope springs up. This is the wandering in the wilderness before the Promised
Land; the time of tribulation and birth pains before the new creation; the
execution, death, and burial of Jesus before his glorious resurrection.
Following that pattern of darkness before the dawn, in Lent we have been
invited to put to death our earthly nature and self-will in order to make way
for our truer and fuller life which Paul says is ‘hidden with Christ in God’.
It may be that this
Lenten period of loss and tribulation has come to us unwanted and uninvited. We
find ourselves wandering in the wilderness, or lying in the tomb, wishing for
new life. That Easter Saturday experience is so much part of our Christian
lives, and it is a place where the Christian hope is least looked for or
expected. What disciple would think to hope when Jesus lay dead in a tomb? And
yet there was hope, of the most unexpected sort. Easter morning was just on the
horizon.
The message of
Christ on Easter Saturday to us in the tomb is that we will yet have life, even
as Christ had life, if we abide in him.
‘Voor een boom die omgehakt wordt, is er hoop.
Hij gaat weer groeien, hij krijgt nieuwe takken.’
Lloyd Brown
(Lloyd was formerly an intern at our church. He
is now living and working in Leuven.)
"Job's Evil Dreams" by William Blake, 1757-1827, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN, http://diglib.library.
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