Seeking the Living Among The Dead

(via HSLDA)

Look around you, on this Easter Day. What do you see?

For those of us in the Northlands, this is a dramatic time of year. The snow is melting, revealing green grass and the buds of early spring flowers peaking from among the drifts, having fought their way to the surface through frozen earth and the icy bite the wind still carries. Creatures once asleep begin to rise from their dens (as I found out the hard way with my home’s current invasion of deer mice). Even the clear waters of the lake seem less inhospitable now, their cerulean depths sparkling in the warming sun, no longer the ice blue of the stark winter.

The world seems to be coming alive, and just in time for the Resurrection. Birdsong once forgotten in this place has returned, as the robins and geese move north once more. All the heavens and the earth seem filled with God’s praise today, and why not? He has risen from the dead, the God-Man we had slain! Evil, once claiming victory, has lost. The dark curse has been lifted. The war has been won. . .

So why are we still troubled? Why does evil still nip at our hocks, herding us to the places we should not wish to go? Why, if we have won, are there battles still to be waged?

Relax, my brothers and sisters, for you are thinking like the mortal ones. See with your immortal eyes, gifted you by the blood of the Lamb Who Was Slain, and the answer is clear. We are a people in exile, and when we forget that, it is easy to fall into despair.

We are troubled in this world because it is not our world. We are children of the King of a distant country, and this is a battlefield far from the land we long for. This is a world full of demons and darklings, whose one pleasure is in stealing souls and corrupting all that our Father has made good. They try us and harass us because they are permitted to, that we may be refined into stronger, braver, love-fueled Warriors of Light and Truth. And it is for this reason also that we are still called to battle.

But not on this day. This day, we get a break from the battlefield and come to the empty tomb, a place of peace and beauty and wonder, where only light can dwell. For in His conquering of the forces of darkness, Our Savior drove even the last straggler of its ranks away from this place. Where once was only the punishment for the follies of our ancestors, now is a gateway to our homeland. Where once was only moldy bones, now is a new body that will never die. Where once was sin and separation from God, now is salvation and the promise that we can be with Him forever.

We must see beyond the grave and view the message it conveys, the hope contained within it in the place of the anticipated corpse. Otherwise, we truly are as the women of the gospel: we come seeking the living among the dead, and so we see nothing but a terrifying absence of the expected.

But if we look beyond — if we recognize Jesus’ voice and believe with fervent love in His Promises — then we seek Him where He is, within and with us always. And we shall always find him there, bearing witness to the Truth as once he declared to Pilate.

Do not forget the peace and Truth of Easter, but carry it with you in your heart. Days are coming when this Truth will be the fire to keep us warm in an inhospitable country, as we venture forth, seeking those lost between the trenches.

Grace and Peace, my brothers and sisters, through this and Every Easter until we celebrate this feast forever in the court of our King.

-E.G. Norton