A promise I cling to...

It is Easter morning.  A holy mystery that I have wrestled with my whole life and a promise I cling to.  He is risen.

We carried stones into the Good Friday service.  According to Jewish custom,  stones are placed in a pile to mark a new grave. These stones were for the grave of a savior we loved and followed.  Stones that represent the weight of worry, pain,  suffering... death itself.  I bought baby Miles. The ashes and the stones and the dark church. A final boom filled the room.  It was finished.  Andrew carried his small stone and threw it in the pile.  He held my hand.

Saturday,  miles dressed in black came to the church.  The boys carried thier baptismal candles. Water poured.  The christ candle lit for the very first time.  The boys candles lit one after another.  The light spread.  The darkness of Good Friday broken by the new light of Christ.  And here,  miles joined us. Water poured over his head reminding us of a promise that nothing would ever ever seperate him from the love of God. We dressed him in white.  The first witness this year of the resurrection.

I am at peace. I sat in church this morning and soaked in the hymns.   Words with such deep promise. I wrestled again with the holy mystery of the empty tomb.  The promise I cling to.  Miles dressed in white. This Lent, I let go of my ability to protect him from the pain and darkness of this world.  And I brought him to the deep water that carries him into the promise of this holy day that pain and suffering and death do not have the final say in his life or mine. We are both born anew.

Blessings to all who have walked these holy days with me.  May you also receive this unknowable promise that nothing, at all,  can separate us from the love of God.