Yesterday, as I was sitting with a grieving family, I said something that probably a good Christian shouldn't have said. One of the family members remarked, "It will be alright, it will be alright." Today, Resurrection Day, tells us it will be alright -- we all know this. But I, not meaning to give any sort of advice on grieving at all (because everyone is different), automatically responded that if you ever get to a moment where you don't think it will be alright, let yourself have that thought. I said that it's good to work through it. I hope I didn't offend anyone in the room, but after having deep doubt myself, I've become quick to reassure and to make space for those who maybe can't say 100% of the time that "it will be alright."
Maggi Dawn has a great post this morning about just not feeling it on Easter. She echoes what I pointed out yesterday. Easter is the day when we are supposed to celebrate that Jesus is risen:
But what do you do if Easter comes and your spirits do not rise? It’s a bad day in the kitchen, in your marriage, with your in-laws or your hormones or your bank balance? What do you do if your job has disintegrated, your hopes are dashed, your dreams didn’t come true – or if, simply for some unaccountable reason, there is no hallelujah in your heart?
There is no need to beat yourself up. Read the story again, and you see that even his first disciples took time to absorb the news. Mary saw it and jumped at it. Peter and John didn’t believe it, half-believed it, went to look and still took a while to take it in. The other disciples took longer – Thomas, according to John, stubbornly refusing to believe what his eyes could not see. And even when the disciples did get the news, they didn’t know quite what to do with it: for a while they still found themselves fishing in Galilee, a little lost in life.
The hallelujah of Easter, the risen spirits, are not always instant. There are weeks and weeks of Easter still to come; the Church calendar celebrates the slow dawning of Easter for fifty days – even longer than the arduous journey of Lent. Today is a promise of things to come, not a climactic moment that you have to catch as it passes. If your heart doesn’t yet say Hallelujah, let your curiosity lead you, let your doubts be voiced and your questions be heard.
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