Burying into hope...

Easter has changed in meaning for me over the years. Each year I feel like I’m grasping it in a new and hopefully more full sense, so may be by the time I’m old and gray I’ll have a simple understanding for this cornerstone event in my faith tradition.

This year’s Easter comes at a strange time. Here’s some back ground.

About three years ago Pearl and I help led a group of about 25 high school students on a trip to the Czech republic where we partnered with a local church in providing an English camp for local students. The trip was a wonderful success. Every American made deep friendships with the Czech’s and tears were shed when it was time to journey back home.

One young man who our entire team seemed to bond with was Pavel. Pavel was an amazing person, loving God and people in a very surprising and sincere way, someone who influenced a room of people just by walking in and was simply a delight to be around.

Pavel was studying here in the States on a football scholarship. About a year ago during a random physical a lump was discovered, further examinations performed and a diagnosis of cancer given.

Last Friday Pavel lost his personal fight with cancer. He was only 22 years old.

Many more tears have been shed.

So this year I celebrate Easter in light of Pavel’s untimely death, the grieving of close friends and the questions of “why” lingering in the air.

But as this tension rest in my soul my faith says there’s more, it says that there was this man who lived, who died, but who we now believe in has changed everything.

This man is Jesus.

My faith says that he came to restore, to make things right, to redeem that which has been broken.

So I must believe that he is now restoring Pavel. That the cancer is gone and that Pavel is experiencing what life was really meant to be.

I must also believe that he is now restoring this world around us. That hearts that have been wounded by the shrapnel of crap in this world can be healed, that marriages that are stress filled and teetering on collapse can be put back, that homes that resemble war zone can find peace, that lives that live in the despair of utter poverty and abandonment can find humanity.

That hope can still be found

That hope can still be restored

That hope can still be experienced and lived

So this weekend as my faith tradition remembers it’s cornerstone figure’s death, burial and resurrection I will also be remembering the hope that came with this resurrection.

I will be looking for signs of his redemption in the world around me

I will be trying to plant seeds of this hope in the lives I encounter

I will be trying to bury this world with hope.

Ps – here’s a slideshow that was made for Pavel.