“Always, everywhere, in the deepest depths…the highest heights”

I do not want ever to be indifferent to the joys and beauties of this life. For through these, as through pain, we are enabled to see purpose in randomness, pattern in chaos. We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love.

– Madeleine L’Engle, Two-Part Invention

The immense beauty and mystery of Easter weekend is that over just a few days, we celebrate all the pain and all the joy that humanity can possibly hold. On a rainy Thursday evening, I listening to the wind outside my living room window, the chatter of my children who are not yet asleep in their beds. Tomorrow we will go to church and be reminded of the solemness of Good Friday, of the sacrifice made for us out of love. We will spend the weekend in waiting but in celebration too, knowing that victory is already complete. And then on Sunday, oh, how I love Easter Sunday! There is no celebration like it. There is nothing that dulls the sharpness of pain and suffering like Easter Sunday. And there is nothing that makes a difference in my own suffering like the memory of Good Friday. That I can worship and believe in a God who has also wept and been in pain and felt abandoned and prayed prayers that seemed left unanswered.

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when the good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

Madeleine L’Engle, Two-Part Invention

This memoir by Madeleine L’Engle (she of A Wrinkle in Time fame) has been on my TBR for years so it’s strange and funny that I’ve picked it up now, not knowing how much of it would speak to me at this time. I’ve copied several passages into my journal. Some of her life experience covered in the book hits a little too close to home for me right now so I don’t plan on reviewing it but I do recommend it.

I’ve said before how I’ve come to love the church season of Lent as an adult because I truly appreciate the space it makes for a time of mourning, something our modern society doesn’t necessarily do very well at. But I also very much love that Lent is always leading up to – and you always know it’s going to end there – the greatest celebration the Church has. We have the freedom to mourn because we are not left in our grief.

I hope whether you are in a time of grief or a time of joy, you find beauty around you and cause for celebration this weekend. Happy Easter! He is risen indeed!