Holy Weekend

This morning started with dark skies and just a few rain drops. Raindrops like bittersweet tear drops of that which must happen, which in the end will be good, but at the time just seems bad. The day cleared and then came the smoke. As the afternoon went on our skies turned grey, then orange as the sunset, though the sun no longer shone. Just thick smoke and the smell of burning and ash. Not the good smell of when fire places start up in late fall as the weather turns cold, but that of devastation. Warnings to close your windows and keep your asthmatic kids inside.
All this in the midst of Holy Week. I sat in our service tonight a combined experience of the last supper and the 7 last words and heard with new visions the reading of that moment when Christ breathed his last and the skies went dark for three hours. The depth and sacrifice hits a new level tonight as I see the images of devastation and remember that smell and orange sky of this afternoon. How different it is for me to feel this darkness and know that not just Sunday, but Easter is coming. That there will be resolution/resurrection. But, what about the whole communities that burnt to the ground today? Not just a single home, but a whole town burned. A community that will have to scatter just like the community Jesus built scattered upon his death. I can't imagine anything was ever the same after that night. Nothing for these communities will ever be the same. But, what happens for them on Sunday? Will their days go dark for three days and then resurrection? Will Ty and his Extreme Makeover come in and rebuild entire towns?
I am even more grateful in this Holy season and this Holy Week that not just this Sunday but every week there is an Easter. There will always be the resurrection for me. My prayer is that in the next days that will be so dark for some they find hope. Hope in tomorrow's full moon. Hope in the rains that will come Saturday. Hope in the Sonrise on Sunday.