Passion + patience =

*Get your minds out of the gutter! :)*

= RESURRECTION!

and

= a wonderful Good Friday service that ended sometime around ten o'clock!

(A wee bit late for this charismatic-turned-Anglican!)

--> As a public-service announcement, if you are local and want to proclaim the Risen Christ at the earliest possible time on Easter morning, the Easter Vigil is being held tonight (Saturday, 4/7) at Christ the Redeemer, 188 Elliott Street in Danvers, starting at 7:30 and lasting (possibly longer than me, we'll have to see) until midnight, at which point there will be great rejoicing at the fact that death's power has been broken and a midnight breakfast feast!!

And then, at 5:30, this family will wake up to go to a sunrise Easter celebration at 6am overlooking Bass Rocks in Gloucester followed by more breakfast!! We'll all look like Elijah does above when we wake up... but so worth it!

Easter is one of our entire family's favorite holidays because it encapsulates that great hope that we have stored within us-- the hope that somehow, someway, death isn't all that we have coming-- that by some inexplicable act of mystical love, we might get pardoned.

C.S. Lewis explains it this way in his book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when two of the main characters look for the powerful lion Aslan unjustly slaughtered by the White Witch:

At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise — a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate…. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.

“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice from behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad….
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

And that's why I stayed awake for almost three hours watching the re-enacting of our Lord's death last night and will watch for four hours tonight awaiting his awakening from the grave. When death is swallowed up in victory and the grave holds no power over we foolish mortals anymore, that's something worth getting excited about!!