September 13, 2021

My aunt and uncle live in a house called Winona on Hungars Creek on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Winona was built in 1680, just a few generations after the first English settlers arrived across the Bay at Jamestown. How many feet have gone up and down Winona’s stairs in the intervening centuries? I picture my father, who died last October, there as a toddler. And yet he is a relative newcomer to the parade of lives Winona has seen.

Sometimes the ephemerality of our lives on earth takes center stage. Here today, gone tomorrow. I love life and the people in it; the one and doneness of it all would be too much to bear without the great hope we have in Christ Jesus.

After Lazarus died, Jesus consoled Martha. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Do you believe this? As we say each week in the Creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

“Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (Easter Day – BCP)