there are empty, lonely days and meeting places

You had high hopes.

It felt right and gloriously good all week, but then Easter morning came and went. And suddenly your house was plunged into an ever more wonder-less-land. You and your people living there but something was missing.

Lonely besets, though you weren't alone. And Sunday ended more like an empty tomb, without a Body, a friend, a family member, or an anybody besides you and yours.

I don't know how many past Easters I had set the bar high. All my dress shopping, shoe snagging, and gussy-ing up for that special service to only come home and have it fall apart. Disjointed from all the wonderful happenings I wasn't part of, cars lining driveways except ours.

Friends, family, loved ones, whole communities gathering somewhere else.

This year was different but I wondered about yours. Was it full of fellowship and friends? Or more like a party you were partially invited too? All dressed up and no where to go afterwards? Or a full schedule which by the end of the day, left you empty-handed?

And I thought of how we are sometimes a Mary rising early, hurrying to find our Beloved to only find Him gone. Perhaps a Peter outrun by a friend looking for our closest Friend to discover Him missing.

Mary wept and Peter left. Both empty. Both missing something lost, even worse than before. They'd rejoiced with Him all the week prior to that fateful day on a cross. And now, they didn't even have a Body in death.

But we know how the story ends, like He knows yours. Even when you're blind to how He'll "fix" it. When you're aching for arms of comfort. When you're left behind by friends or left out. When you're living with an upside down future where there doesn't seem an out. When you've seen some burdened stone roll away, to only reveal scraps....

Then you're in the meeting place. Not always in our timing, but always in our need.

Sometimes, He tarries His comfort. The hour expires and all that's left are stone cold tombs.

And we're at our own Lazarus-gathering, grieving. A relationship, a lost friendship, a troubled marriage, that prodigal child, a parent, a longed-for Heavenly reunion and there lies the groaning.

Emptiness. Fabrics of a torn life. Abandoned burials.

When Jesus came to where Lazarus was buried: "He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, 'Where have you laid him?'” John 11:33,34

He not only groaned and was troubled by sorrow, but He also asked, "where?" Where do I need to go? And we groan too, bound by death while aching to be made alive and He asks "Where have you laid your sorrow?"

And He says:

Where is your loss? 

Point Me that way.

Where have you wrapped the grave clothes? 

Take Me there.

Where is the buried stench?

Let me call it by name and bring it to Life.




I shared this at Jen's place:

Also, Shared this at Ann's: