Easter

It's Easter week, Holy Week, the week before Easter Sunday, the day the Church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This week for the Christian Church is a really big deal, the biggest happening of the whole year.  Christianity is all about Easter.  I find it sad that Easter for kids is about dyeing Easter eggs, hiding and hunting for them, chocolate bunnies and Easter baskets.  For adults, maybe there's a dinner for all the relatives in town, maybe not.  For me, Easter tells about the possibility of new life.  It's about taking the time for self-reflection to consider what it is in our lives we'd like to see renewed, filled with new life, and usually for that to happen we have to let something else go.  I remember one Easter when I was a minister preaching that message and then giving the congregation the opportunity to come forward and light a candle to represent the light of the longed for new life.  I expected a handful to come forward, but to my surprise everyone in the congregation came forward.  It took a whole extra hour.  I remember a long line of people waiting and an altar over-filled with candles burning bright.  We all need new life.  In this dark and hurting world we need the new life of kindness and compassion and justice and truth and many more things.  In my mind I see a long line of all humanity coming forward to pray for new life.  That's what Easter means to me--new life.