Nova Scotia – The Day After and For A Long Time to come ~~ Monday of the Second Week of Easter ~~

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It feels as if the Easter season full of joy, abundant life, beautiful flowers, newness, emerging crocuses – abruptly came to an end yesterday with the tragic killings in northern Nova Scotia.  Today feels much more like Good Friday.  The celebration of Easter is over for today.  But not Easter’s hope, its promise of life out of death (every kind of death) and its sure hope. 

But so as not gloss over this tragedy with religious sentimentality, today we choose to be with the suffering of so many in our sister province and across our land on this second Monday of Easter.  Let Easter greetings be muted.  Today.

In today’s Gospel text, John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus “by night.”  Today, however bright the sun, it is night.   We earlier prayed at daily Eucharist:  “In union with all peoples, living and dead, we commit ourselves to the ongoing evolving of life, that goodness may triumph over evil, that hope may outgrow despair, that justice may triumph and love prevail in the end … may we never cease to collaborate with our creative God, who begets the possible from the impossible,  life from death, hope from despair, and the renewal of all creation through God’s providence.” Perhaps – likely – we have never meant this prayer more than now.

Gerald Sittser, “A Grace Disguised” urges: “Out of my pain, God became a living reality to me as never before.”  True, but not yet today.  In “Pooky’s Triumph”, Bethel Crockett further writes:  “I learned to trust that through God’s grace something beautiful and new would emerge even in the face of my (our) weaknesses, tears, pain and hopelessness.  I too would live again.”  Again – so true, but not yet today.

Today we share with many others the pain, this time of powerlessness verging on hopelessness, the enormity of that which is so senseless – so that together we might one day experience Easter again.

Shalom, Saleem, Shanti, Peace.

-  Glenn with Chantelle -




Comments

  1. Jane KApril 21, 2020 at 8:32 AM

    I need a strong dose of Easter Hope. How can we make sense of such violence and suffering? Our God is a God who loves unconditionally, and so how can s/he not be grieving when we suffer?
    Now we see through a veil dimly…then we shall see God face to face. Lord, help my unbelief.

    ReplyDelete
  2. FranApril 21, 2020 at 9:58 AM

    So well stated. Thank you Glenn and Chantelle I would hug you both so close if I could for mutual support it almost feels like we in 2020 are in that room with the disciples scared and wondering where is that love that Jesus told us about we need to support one another and in that universal support our faith can be carried when we can't seem to maintain it on our own.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JudithApril 21, 2020 at 11:46 AM

    I have no words. All I feel is horror and deep, deep, sadness. Thank you, each one, for your words.

    ReplyDelete

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