Easter Sunday and Easter Monday

Easter Sunday is a day of confusion. As the certainty of death's power over life is shaken, we are shaken. We stand awestruck, speechless, and perplexed as we search for the living one among the dead. But we find no one there. There is no stability in the empty tomb; there is only confusion - the confusion of a deep hope that what we think has happened might actually be.

On Easter Monday, the dust settles. We awake from our confusion renewed, hearts stilled, to a world suffused as with the wondrous quiet of burning incense, of something we cannot speak but surely know. The birds sing as they always have, the sun still shines and - in other parts of the world or in our own - rain and snow still fall, but the world has changed. What once was certain is not so certain anymore. And in that quiet, an ungraspable peace: of life renewed, of another chance, of a new heaven and new earth before our very eyes.