From Golgotha to Emmaus

It amazes me at times that although it's been 15 years since I've graduated from Duke I can still get so wound up about a damn game. I don't know if it's my own desire to identify with a winner or my own former basketball career desiring to be prolonged that does it. Probably the combination. It is just a game, and yet here I sit with a sunken stomach and deflated countenance after Duke's loss to West Virginia. Just a game? Good grief.

But I'm thankful for this disheartened feeling at the moment. Besides the disappointment of Duke's loss, there are certainly other things of higher value to mourn. For now, that list seems fairly long to me. The most acute being missing my kids on Easter as they're in Florida.

So, why am I on such a "chipper" topic on an Easter weekend? Because at the moment, this Saturday feels bleak and black, and yet, and yet...

I find a voice breaking through the darkness. It's a quiet voice, but it's steady, and it's reassuring. The voice says: I know your pain. I know your hurt. I have taken it myself. I have wept, and I have mourned. The pain is real. Don't try to deny it. Don't mask over it. Feel it, know it, and embrace it. But...remember... it ...is...not...final. "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning." (Psalm 30:5)

The notion that one must understand the depths of their own pain to understand the possibilities for the heights of joy has always seemed ludicrous to me. I just couldn't get it. And yet...on this Black Saturday...it makes sense.

Pain and hurt are real. Try not to gloss over them for we deny reality when we do. But the flipside is that it means we can also embrace the joy, love, and hope of Easter. Hope. A new path, new opportunities, transformation, and a new life are possible. I can't explain it, but in seeing the depths of my own pain and hurt, I've been given the gift of hope in a way I have not sensed before.

May you find hope this Easter in the crucified and resurrected one. Whatever our own roads to Golgotha hold or have held, may we hold the hope of the Emmaus road before us.