Easter Seeds

Tis the weekend after Easter…

If I’m honest about it, I wasn’t ready for Easter this year. I’m not sure I’m ever ready for Easter – but this year especially, I was unprepared. My heart wasn’t ready. My spirit wasn’t ready. My schedule wasn’t ready. My budget wasn’t ready. My… nothing. I was not ready.

And yet it came. With unexpected fellowship and rest of the beautifulest kind: The ever-needed reminder that Jesus is alive; that He is risen (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!); that Jesus Himself took sin upon Himself and conquered death.

Oh, but life is death, isn’t it? We are born and we die. We count ourselves blessed if there is a great span between those two moments, but the truth is – those moments come to each of us without much concern for whether we want it or not. It is part of our shared experience – life and death.

It’s an interesting idea to me, that we can somehow distract ourselves daily from the fact that we are always growing nearer to death. Those of us who battle anxiety know – it is bad, extremely bad, when we cannot distract ourselves from this fact: We know we are dying, and we convince ourselves it is coming any moment now. One of these moments, we’ll be right. In the meantime, thankfully, if we focus on life, we sometimes forget the pain, the heartache, and the inevitability of death.

A friend sent Simmie a super-cool hydroponic seed-starting kit in celebration of her second birthday, and I had the true joy of helping my little girl count out her tomato seeds, place them gently (“like a butterfly” – that’s how we’re teaching careful behaviors) in the soil pods, and then into the hydro-basin. Simmie has delighted in watching the seeds sprout and grow. She’s enthralled with the soft fuzzy tomato-plant-stems and the ever-growing leaves. I worried that such an activity would be too advanced for her to understand, but once again – my two-year-old surpasses my expectations. She soaks up every bit of information, every experience, and processes it in her brain in a way I don’t really understand.

And I, as usual, am slow to the punch. It is the weekend after Easter, and I’m reminded that unless a seed is broken apart and dies, life cannot grow.

Praise God – the seed has already been broken apart. His name is Jesus. The life we live today is ever-nearing physical death, and yet – as His children – we know that we are ever-approaching Life: true life; eternal life: that for which we are created; that for which we are intended.

So grow, little plants. Grow. Dig your roots down deep and reach toward the sun (the Son). The seed has been broken, and raised from death. Because of this, you and I shall also be raised. That is good, good news.

Happy weekend after Easter, friends.

From the shores of Wicket Lake;