Piloting Faith: Easter is complicated...
A Word for the Day...
I workout at Unit 2 Fitness in Atlanta. I am there 6 days a week...if my schedule allows. One of my workout partners is Christian Brunetti, a veteran who has served our country with honor. I wanted to share with you his Easter reflections:
“Easter is such a curious holiday in many respects. It combines the greatest tragedy and triumph in the Christian religion. The crucifixion, which for the believers at the time represented the end of everything they believed and hoped for, and the resurrection, which was the rebirth and confirmation of their greatest hope. The striking dichotomy often makes me wonder what I believe and why.
This Easter, hundreds of Christians were murdered as they attended Easter services in Sri Lanka. My first deployment to Iraq was marked with devastating attacks on Iraqi Christians who were preparing to celebrate Easter. My final deployment was marked by a suicide bomber detonating his vest in the middle of Friday Mosque services, killing every one inside. I was less than a mile away from Mother Emmanuel church the Wednesday night a white supremacist walked in and massacred 9 members, trying to incite a race war. I’ve seen literal torture chambers, barely avoided being at the site of an attack on an Israeli embassy in a foreign country, and seen just about every type of cruelty a human being could visit on another, in the name of things like religion, or greed, or in the fight for power. I’ve lost friends to suicide, who struggled to cope with the weight of things they have experienced.
It’s enough to make some one jaded. To believe that on a world like ours there is little room for concepts such as hope or love or faith.
Yet you know what else I’ve seen? Total strangers, from separate religious and ethnic backgrounds, looking to protect each other in this times of crisis. I’ve been in a crowd of thousands of others, proclaiming the power of love over the power of hate. I’ve witnessed strangers risk their lives to warn other of imminent danger, of reaching out hands to help in the midst of this same chaos.
I’ve seen men and women devastated by war come home and find feeling. Start new careers where they help people find their dream homes, or work in the medical field and work to help people find physical healing, or work as coaches and teachers to help others find their passion for life. I’ve seen former drug dealers and drug users become homeless advocates and recordings artists. I’ve seen total strangers step up in times of need to help those in need.
So I choose to believe that there is a God, something greater than all of us, but in all of us, that can create something beautiful out of even the most devastating circumstances. That from death there can be resurrection.
If you don’t believe in God or you believe in a different God, I think the principal remains the same. This world is filled with cruelty and hardship and heartbreak, it is all around us. But if you look hard enough, you will also see love and hope and the courage to create something new and better exists there also.
So today, despite everything the world seems to want to impose on us, I choose hope. I choose faith. I choose love. I love you all and hope you had a Happy Easter if you celebrate it, and that your day was filled with love and joy and hope, no matter what your religion or what you believe.”
I couldn't agree more.
- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight
Blessing for the Week
Blessed are you who turn with passion, with strength, and with hope, for you will be filled with the God who is coming to life in you.
- Jan Richardson, Sacred Journeys: A Woman's Book of Daily Prayer
