Of Easter

But I can tell you this: that what I believe happened and what in faith and with great joy I proclaim to you here is that he somehow got up, with life in him again, and the glory upon him. And I speak very plainly here, very unfancifully, even though I do not understand well my own language. I was not there to see it any more than I was awake to see the sun rise this morning, but I affirm it as surely as I do that by God's grace the sun did rise this morning because that is why the world is flooded with light.

He got up. He said, "Don't be afraid." Rich man, poor man, child; sick man, dying man; man who cannot believe, scared sick man, lost one. Young man with your life ahead of you. "Don't be afraid."

He said, "Feed my sheep," which is why, like the chief priests and the Pharisees, we try to make that tomb as secure as we can. Because this is what he always says: "Feed my sheep . . . my lambs." And this is what we would make ourselves secure from, knowing the terrible needs of the lambs and our abundance, knowing our own terrible needs.

He said, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Anxiety and fear are what we know best in the fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it.

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, his will, not ours is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.

- Buechner | "The End is Life" | The Magnificent Defeat

My waiting list

My list of what I'm waiting for is really boiled down into one thing. I am waiting for my life to begin. I have always been curious--even a little anxious--to see what God has planned for my life. I am so thankful to know that my purpose is to minister to youth. But I just wish it would begin already! I know that seminary is a part of this process, I know that I am right where God wants me to be, but I feel like I am in a holding cell. Most of the time I hate school. I love the education I am getting, and I even love the majority of my professors. But I am eager to get out and do what I am being prepared to do. And now that we have friends who are graduating and going off to their places of ministry I want to be doing that too. I want to know where God is going to send us, what the church (or other ministry) will look like, and begin leading a ministry. Gentry and I hope to move back to Florida to be with family and friends, but we know that this may not happen. We are doing our best to be content with wherever it may be that God sends us. But this waiting and not knowing makes me very anxious at times. It is so hard to just wait.

But maybe waiting is a good thing. Maybe contentment is a discipline I need to learn. Waiting on the Lord and resting in his good purposes might not be such a bad thing.