Easter Eve (Day 98, Year 3)

One Easter, in the very early hours after midnight, my childhood home was struck by lightning. I was probably my son's age--about 10--and it was a late in April Easter. It had been unseasonably warm and thunderstorms were rolling in and ushering in more seasonal Spring temperature. 

My Dad woke up to the loud bang--louder than thunder. I don't remember that bang. I just remember the air--it was charged and electric. It was like we were on the verge of something very important. 

My Dad, the World War II Merchant Marine Veteran with the bad, bad knees messed up from shrapnel from all the times he was torpedoed, moved as swiftly as he could from his bedroom all the way down to the laundry room off the rec room. The fuse box was in that laundry room; and my Dad had been around long enough to know that he needed to shut off the electricity. He was once a fire fighter for McKinley Fire Department, too. I have all his pins. 

But, my Dad was cursing his knees and his age. I could hear him saying "Damn it Carrington, move" over the strange electric buzz in the air. I was too scared to stay in my room, but he had forbidden me from following him. I compromised and waited on the bedroom steps. I heard him reach the laundry room. 

And then I heard what sounded like pops--a whole bunch in rapid succession. The surge from the lightning strike forced the fuses to shoot out of the fuse box. 

My Dad missed being hit by hot, fiery, electric bullets by moments. 

He came up to me and said, "Tricia, had I been faster, I would have been dead."

I told you there was a charge in the air that night, like something important was about to happen, friends. 

That night, I learned, that sometimes the really horrible things like war and bad knees and lightning strikes don't stop God from working His good. The world is vast and complicated. I sometimes think of the bad like a freight train that God cannot simply stop. But, what He can do, is divert it. My Dad's story--and the story of that night--started long before the lightning struck. 

God knows what's coming for us friends. He knew what was coming for His only son. He knew the thing He could not stop, but He worked His good and diverted it all from the tomb, to Easter Sunday. 

The Good News isn't just the empty tomb from so long ago; the Good News is everyday, through lightning strikes and war and unthinkable sorrow and super bad, God is diverting the freight train and working His good. It isn't always exactly how we would want it; but there is Good in every single moment we see the tomb for what it is: empty. 



Comments

  1. Dayum! On a roll with some great posts. Love this, and Amen!

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