Good Friday…..Easter…… has been on mind so much this week.
As I took my run on this beautiful Good Friday morning, I noticed lawn signs in many of the yards that announced websites to attend “virtual” Easter services. One of my neighbors was out as well, taking a walk. This pandemic has brought many more walkers out in the morning to get fresh air! I mentioned to her about the signs and the online Easter services. How wonderful to see Easter services being announced on lawns on my entire running route! She smiled and paused and proceeded to say, “it will be the first Easter service I have ever attended…..an online service.” She went on to say that this pandemic has opened her eyes and they eyes of her family to things that they would have never seen without it.
Wow. After my conversation with her, the rest of my run was really just going over and over in my mind, our conversation. Every step and every breath were filled with thoughts about today, Good Friday. Thoughts of the timing of this pandemic we are in….and Easter weekend. Being in quarantine, and this entire experience has brought me into this Easter season a different person. It is more meaningful than ever this year. I am more grateful. I look forward to Sunday in a way I never have before.
Someone asked me this week what emotion I have felt the most during this crisis. Oddly enough it is anticipation….I know God is up to something. There is transformation and change happening. I know in my own life things that gripped me in my life, I am releasing and letting go. I know the old normal is no longer. And I am so ok with that.
What happens beyond this pandemic, when that new normal comes?
My sister recently wrote in her blog:
What if we have an opportunity to not just exit out of this experience, but emerge from it?
What if this time we’ve been in hasn’t been so much a holding tank, but a cocoon? I was in such agreement with her that this quarantine experience has made my anticipation of this Easter even more meaningful.
I simply could not word it better than my sister does:
“As I approach this Good Friday, and I remember the sacrifice Jesus made for me, I am asking myself what places I’ve struggled giving up during this time. I’m choosing to loosen my grip on those things and make them my offering to God. And in that place, I’m believing for a resurrection that only God could bring.”
I truly believe that this Sunday, Easter Sunday, there will be more in those services than ever before. I thank God my neighbor and her family for the first time will be one of those people attending, from her home. I think that is pretty amazing. It’s a very good Friday. Sunday is coming……..