What a strange day Easter Monday is. I don't think it's at all strange if you're having a precious holiday before work on Tuesday, but after the high drama of Holy Week and Easter day I felt the day quite empty. Perhaps this is a good thing: I was contemplating, not for the first time, how it must have felt to be one of the disciples after that first Easter. (All that contextual Bible Study has got to me!)
OK. You've seen - or heard, because you were too fearful to go to Golgotha - of Jesus' death on the Cross. You were distraught and terrified in equal measure. Then you heard about the empty tomb. Or you were there that evening when Jesus appeared in the room where you were shut in "for fear of the Jews". And then he went off again, according to John, for another eight days. So on the Monday - what? What do you do now?
And we know that, in the event, they got on with it. If they hadn't, we wouldn't have a Christian church. They picked themselves up and they did what Jesus had told them to, without his being physically there to lead them. Quite something, really.
Now I've always found it hard to say goodbye to people. Even if they're at the end of a phone (or VOIP if we're being thrifty) I miss their actual presence. There's a space which nothing else fills. I wonder how I'd have got on if I'd been a disciple. Pretty miserably, I suspect. Right now I'm about to go to a Worship Group meeting to work on next Sunday's service in my own church. This has been going on for a while now to let Hugh our priest go to one of the other churches he's been in charge of - we have DIY Sundays every month. But this will be our first Sunday of a vacancy. Hugh has retired. He will be back - but until our new Rector arrives we're on our own.
That's why I've used the photo above from our NZ trip. We were trying to work out just where we were in this wonderful high desert. Feels a bit like that now: exalted, exhilerating - but pathless.
Better get on with it.
I haven't a clue. At least you were able to comment on this - earlier today I couldn't have comments. Or maybe it was just on the missing post? a jinx on a specific post? Help!
ReplyDelete