Resurrecting Easter: A Three Part Series

Part Three: Just Keep Breathing

This is the third part of my Easter Trilogy, but I cannot tie up all the loose ends. There is no box with a bow, no “happily ever after” as of yet. I have not come to the end of my Easter story. But that’s probably because I am still breathing. God is not finished with the path I have to walk. So I keep walking. And I keep singing, for praise is a powerful weapon against the darkness and the unknown.

And I keep breathing. I have several friends who have a “word of the year” for 2018. These are words like “Inspire,” “Grow,” “Flourish,” and so forth. My word for the year? “Breathe.” Just keep breathing. Because some days that’s all I have the strength to do…take it one breathe at a time.

With that in mind, with this post I will follow in the path of many great writers. When you don’t know what to say, steal someone else’s words. But it’s not stealing, really, if you give credit where credit is due. So, thank you, J.R.R. Tolkien, for being so inspiring, and for writing this wonderful little conversation about the stories that really mattered.

“Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that there were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same—like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?”

“I wonder,” said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending,

but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.” (JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers)

These words brings me back to the first Resurrection weekend. The disciples didn’t know, on that Friday night or that Saturday, what Sunday would bring. We look back knowing The Rest Of The Story and think them foolish because Jesus had told them multiple times that he was going to die and then come back to life. But Jesus had said a lot of things in parables, in stories, about fig trees and pearls of great price and wedding feasts with bridegrooms and virgins and lamps…and despite all this the disciples were completely clueless, for they were in the middle of their story. They had watched their leader, their rabbi, the head of their little tribe, be executed in the most brutal way the Roman empire could imagine. No one had ever come back from being crucified. Was this just another one of His parables? How could this possibly end well? In the middle of the story, they did not know, they could not know. So perhaps we can look on their fear and trembling with some grace.

I know, today, that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, that He is now seated at the right hand of God.

I know that Frodo and Sam make it to Mount Doom, complete their mission, and then make it home again (I’m not even sorry if I spoiled it for you…the story is 80 years old, it’s not my fault if you haven’t read it or seen the movies yet.)

What I don’t know is what is going to happen tomorrow. Or next week. Or next Easter. I am still in the middle of my story. God does not give me more than a few pages of the story at a time. I see it unfold as it happens. But I can have faith that it will unfold, for God is the Author and Finisher of my story.

Is it easy to keep walking through uncertain, troubling times? Of course not. But we have such treasures of hope in the Scriptures! We know from Isaiah 25:8 that God will “swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces.” Do we feel the sting and pain of death and loss today? Yes…yes we absolutely do. But we walk in glorious faith, knowing that Jesus, “for the joy set before Him, endured the cross and is now at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 12:2). 

And so, until I come to the end of my story, I must keep believing that God will see me through. I keep walking. I keep singing. And. I. Just. Keep. Breathing.