My writing schedule has not been as regular as I intended at the first of the year. Now that my house is sold and I have moved, I think I should be able to get back on track.

We are in the Easter season, the great fifty days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. On the Second Sunday of Easter, we sang “At the Font We Start Our Journey” in worship. The fourth stanza is this:

At the door we are commissioned, now the Easter victory’s won,

To restore a world divided to the peace of Christ as one.
Alleluia, alleluia! Easter’s work must still be done.

I was struck by the final phrase, Easter’s work must still be done.

The work of Easter is grounded in the hope that Easter brings. In the Methodist Book of Daily Prayer, there was a morning devotional by Wil Cantrell of the Holston Conference. Reflecting on 1 Peter 1:3, "You have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” Cantrell writes:

Hope exists in the gap between the now and the not yet. Resurrection gives birth to hope because it is a promise that what is right now, is not what will be. The resurrection of Jesus is not only his victory over death, but it is an anticipation of our own future. The result is an ability to live in a sinful, broken, and unjust world without giving up or giving in. We seek to love now because eventually love will win. We work for justice now because eventually justice will reign. We seek to restore and rebuild now because eventually God will restore all things. And we live fiercely, even in the face of death, because resurrection promises us that eventually life conquers death. We live in hope in a world that is hopeless because we know that, eventually, a new heaven and a new earth will come… Easter’s work must still be done.

Seeking to love. Working for justice. Working to restore and rebuild. Living fiercely.

The work of Easter, made possible by the hope that is ours.

Blessings,
Jimmy