"My two companions were faster than I. Swiftly, they took flight, perhaps in fear, perhaps running to tell the disciples of these words. Risen? I could not see it. I could not see past the bloody and torn body I had watched upon that cross. I could not allow such a wild hope to be embraced. I slipped to the ground, still soft from the fierce storm that raged on the night of my Lord's death, and struggled to think of the sweet smelling grass...instead of His lost face, His missing healing-filled hands. Peter and John came...and left, and still I lay and wept. Where was He?

'Woman, why are you crying?'" (Amy Rachel Peterson, Perpetua.)

New life. The trumpet sound in a room of silence; the river that washed out the desert. That's what the Resurrection was.

What is it now? For me, Easter Sunday is the time dedicated each year for making fun of weird traditions: "Jesus rose from the dead, so let's hide eggs in the shrubbery." As Jim Gaffigan pointed out, if hiding eggs on Easter is too weird for you, "Don't worry. There's a bunny." Cause if it's already weird, why not make it weirder?

Taking communion back to back with criticizing nonsensical American customs and listening to apologetics on the Resurrection, the narrative can get lost.

Come close and listen. I want to show you something beautiful.

There's a poem by Debora Greger that imagines what Eve would feel after the Fall, if she still lived today. In the poem, Eve opens her eyes to see Adam, just as she did on the first day. "But this time," she says, "you were old. When I looked closer, I saw myself in your eyes, a fallen leaf starting to curl."

The world outside her is dying, too; though it doesn't know it yet. "Down the street," Eve observed, "trucks trundled their dark goods into eternity, one red light after another. Though it was morning, street lamps trudged down the sidewalk like husbands yawning on the way to work. On puddles, on rags of cloud, they spilled their weak, human light. With shadow my cup overflowed."

That's the world. That's you and me, reading Ecclesiastes or The Great Gatsby or the newspaper, finding futility in every corner. We live in a depressing world, where all its beauty is choked by death. We're all slaves, really, to aging and time and the inevitable end to what little good we know. The gods of our pursuit have abandoned us.

"With shadow my cup overflowed."

Then. BAM! The Resurrection happens.

That's what it's like. Smack in the middle of a tragedy where the main protagonist (God) dies, the greatbutimpossiblething not only becomes possible...but it occurs. It actually happens. God not only chooses death for Himself in order to erase the debt of sin, but He does something else entirely new.

God kills death. Jesus folds up his burial clothes and walks away. Those nails? They became nothing. What was once a nightmare no one could imagine overthrowing...now became one more victory.

I'm explaining again an old story, that you could probably turn around and explain to me. We both know it well. But think again.

Jesus' resurrection is not only a landmark (or even The Landmark) in history, but it's a metaphor for you and me. Even though it was Jesus who was raised, we were raised with Him. In Him, His life becomes ours. If He's alive, we're alive too. Death can't hold us anymore either.

"He was risen! Risen! I jumped to my feet, oblivious of decorum... He was risen....The sacrifice was made, and now this God was mine. I cried out, reaching beyond the ceiling, the sky and the stars hidden above the sun, 'You are God!' The words echoed and re-echoed... Jesus heard them." (Ibid.)

I want my every Easter to be like that--or hey, forget Easter. I want to be like that all the time...which is one of the reasons I'm writing this several days after the eggs have been hunted and the bunnies have been put wherever the bunnies go. The Resurrection deserves more than once-a-year obligatory attention. Isn't the news wonderful enough to deserve it?