Early on the First Day of the Week

There is a room furnished with familiar things; a carpet with a ruddy woven pattern, a three piece suite, and a polished mahogany display cabinet. It adjoins a small kitchenette, cluttered with the cups and plates of a widowered man. This room and kitchen exit now only in my memory, but sometimes in my dreams I return there to converse with the old man who forever sits on his chair in that familiar room. Our discussions are always the same and they are always welcome. What we say is of no importance; the words are in themselves meaningless to all but the two of us. It is important only to me that I see him and know that he is as he was. Always, in that familiar room, he is as he was – always, and unchanging. My dream always ends in the same way. I stand up and go to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee for the two of us, and each time, when the coffee is made, I return with the cups to the front room and it is changed. He is gone, and the floor and the walls are bare; all the furniture is gone, and I stand alone in an empty room.

While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. John 20:1

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Ùr-Fhàsaidh (@UrFhasaidh) April 04, 2015

In those few moments that we have together, separated now as we are by the grave, I am alive in the deepest mystery of the resurrection and the life. Death; all the turmoil of his passing, and all the loss and confusion of the time that has passed since has all evaporated. For such a brief and beautiful consoling moment he and I are together in a space where the passing of time no longer matters. I still like to think that in this space he is visiting with me as much as I am with him, and perhaps he is. My grandfather is not the only person now gone to their rest who I miss, but he is the only one who takes the time to come and pay me a visit from time to time. At Eastertime when I listen to the account of Jesus’ rising I often think of the women at the tomb sharing together a dream like mine – all that surrounded his death is washed away and the gardener with familiar eyes speaks softly to them. This resurrection is life’s final answer to our mortality and loss and grief and pain. It is the making new of a whole world that has passed away.