Easter...it has held a new, triumphant meaning for me since I discovered that you can't really celebrate the victory of Easter without being devastated by Good Friday; one is meaningless without the other. When I was 19 years old, my beloved Opa died, my mother's father, a man who had completely opened his heart to me and captured mine in the process. Even when he was a continent away, I felt his love.
A brutal, painful heart attack took his life not long after he had celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary. My mother, who had the privilege of being with him when he went home, told me his last words were a prayer of praise, ending, "Jesus is the victor! Hallelujah! Amen."
Grief is far more than emotional. It is a pain so intense that it is physical, devastating, exhausting, all consuming.
Easter came in the early days of our grieving. My mother and I stood together in church, singing the familiar Easter hymns, tears flowing down our faces. It was then that Easter became real to me--truly real--dynamic and immediate rather than historic. I was amazed that my heart could be simultaneously filled with such great joy and such aching sorrow.
Someday I too will be snatched out of this life. Someday I will stand before my Savior, along with all the saints who have gone before, and I will shout with my Opa, "Jesus is the victor! Hallelujah! Amen."
That is what I celebrate at Easter.
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