Today's "yes"

Above our kitchen sink “lives” an Albert Einstein bobble head.  No matter what I ask him, he always nods, “yes.”  It’s very encouraging, especially first thing in the morning.  Perhaps Mary Magdalene felt this magnified a thousand-fold when Jesus, resurrected, appeared before her proclaiming “yes,” with his very being.  Yes, to life.  Yes, to love.  Yes, to what is to come.
 
 Some years ago, Dag Hammarskjold wrote, “For all that has been, thanks.  For all that will be, yes.”  We sometimes hear the past celebrated because it set the stage for the future. I have trouble “celebrating” the betrayal and pain Jesus experienced when human beings rejected the life and love he offered.  Instead, I honor Jesus’ steadfastness to who he was and could be. 
 
“There is a point,” wrote Hammarskjold, “at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back.” Because of Jesus’ choice, grace works its way into the world
 
I cannot celebrate a soldier with devastating wounds or a family’s loss when a parent or child dies too soon.  But I am grateful when God’s purpose and possibility turn pain into space for grace. What I celebrate is the way our strong God persistently works through horrible human situations to bring grace and hope. It is what turns tomb to womb.
 
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity,
but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance,
 renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
                                                                        - Dag Hammarskjold

Today, may you be renewed by the steady radiance of Christ's inexplicably living presence.