I think I awakened the day after Easter with the lyrics of a children’s song bouncing around in my head. The children’s choir in my former church sang it often as an anthem: Every morning is Easter morning from now on. Every day’s Resurrection Day; the past is over and gone.
Those simple lyrics carry a powerful truth. Easter changes everything. And after Easter Sunday is over, it’s not over. Every day becomes blessed as an Easter day of its own. Hope springs eternal, as the poet said – especially as a result of God’s Resurrection victory over the powers of death and darkness.
In fact, to underscore the point, we give these days in the church a name of their own – Eastertide. We are now in a special season of the liturgical year called Eastertide. White continues as the liturgical color for fifty days of Eastertide until red signals the flame of the Spirit on Pentecost near the end of May.
But until then we are privileged to bask in the glory of these days of Eastertide. I pray that we will take advantage of them to realize the opportunities we have for new life in God’s providential care.
Living where we do, we are blessed with the season of spring that reminds us of the great re-awakening all around us. In the days to come our gardens will nearly explode in a blaze of color and lush fragrance. Nature’s glory will remind us of the warmth of God’s new life all around us.
One of our members was telling me yesterday of a trip she took to Washington just days ago to see the Easter flowers in the National Cathedral as well as the cherry blossoms now bursting forth near the monuments. Words of the poet A.E. Housman came back to me as they often do around this time of year:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
May your days of Eastertide be blessed with the promise of renewed hope in all things.
