My twins, John and I have been practicing a marionette show about the Easter story for a couple of weeks. We will do it Easter morning for a room full of children too young to understand death. The gentlest way we can convey the cross is to have a shadow appear behind a veil, with a drum playing like an earthquake.
But
after the darkness... comes the morning. Mary arrived at the tomb weeping, and was met by someone she believed to be the gardener. Jesus spoke her name and she realized He was who she was looking for all along. Joyfully she kneeled at His feet and at His bidding ran to tell the other disciples that Jesus is indeed alive.
There are parts of marriage that must die. My compulsion to ignore what I already have, in an earnest hunt for what I think I deserve has got to
go. It's like looking for something as morbid as the need to control everyone, when I am in a bower. But although the children who will watch our puppet show are enthralled with newness, and find rapture in every daffodil and dandelion that greets them I seem to forget that simple truth. I forgot it today, when I was holding a pair of soft chicks in my hands, yet wasted my thoughts in practicing a complaint I intended to deliver.
I
sang with a group of people about Christ's aliveness. The celebration we felt was contagious. Maybe if you listen you can catch it too.
