First Week of Easter: From FEAR to LIGHT

STEP ONE: BREATHE

Take a deep, cleansing breath. Allow the air to fill your lungs and expand your body. Exhale and empty yourself into the room. Repeat three times - once for the one who Created you, once for the Incarnate One who walks beside you, and once for the Spirit whose life fills your being.

STEP TWO: DWELL IN WORD

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.””

— John 14:25-26

A Personal Story

I grew up on the High Plains of Eastern Colorado, in a small town with a sign on the outskirts that bragged: “Home of 500 Happy People and a Few Soreheads.” All around us stretched the flat unbrokenness of the prairie - a patchwork of scrub and sagebrush pastureland, wheat and barley fields, and green rows of sugar beet plants - interrupted only by the scattered silhouettes of family farms and oil field outbuildings.

To the West, though, glimmering in the distance above the dark and ragged shadows of the Front Range, lie the snow-capped high peaks of the Rocky Mountains. On a clear day, I could trace the skyline from the northerly Twin Sisters over to Longs Peak and Mount Meeker, then down along the Never Summer Range and on southward to Mount Evans, Pikes Peak, and, finally, Mount Blanca way off in the horizon towards New Mexico. How I longed to be whisked from the brown and dusty dryness of my gravel street to the light and lofty brightness of the mountains.

Years later, as an adult, I had the chance to finally live in the high country. I had found a little cabin of my own on a mountainside near the ski resort of Breckenridge. I dreamed of blissful days skiing the steeps and glades, losing myself in the pine and powder for hours on end.

Two weeks before I was to move, I was diagnosed with cancer. Although curable, I was facing months of recovery after surgery, followed by months more of harsh chemotherapy and the weakness and nausea it left in its aftermath.

For days on end, I’d wake to the bright glow of the sunrise off of Hoosier Peak across the valley. There’d be six, seven, eight inches of newly fallen snow on top of more snow, and I knew that I had not the strength to ski that day. Worse still, my blood levels were too low from the chemo. A bad fall or a collision could be something I might not survive.

All I could do, then, was hunker down by the warmth of my little wood stove, watch the snow-capped peaks shine forth in the daytime and slowly fade to shadow as the sun made its way across the sky, knowing that yet another high country adventure had passed me by. And in those grim and uncertain days, all I could do was wait and rest until the medicine had driven the cancer from my body. Wait until my strength came back and it was safe to venture out. How I longed to be whisked from the cold and lonely sameness of my little mountain cabin into the light and lofty brightness of the mountain snow.

In the waiting, though, I found comfort. Sweet, blessed, hopeful comfort in God’s promise that a brighter and newer day would pierce the emptiness of my present darkness. A day when I, too, would hear the Master say: “Rise, let us be on our way.”

STEP THREE: PRAY

God of comfort, let us sense your presence in the emptiness of this time of waiting. Console us through the sense of loss that comes from missed opportunities, connections, and experiences. Give us the strength to bide our time with hope and faith until the new day finally arrives. Amen.

Today’s devotion is by Pastor Scott Simmons, founder/director of Lydia Place/Lydia Way, a Lutheran collective discerning how the Holy Spirit is calling the Church into God’s preferred future. He is also interim pastor of First Lutheran Church in Harris, MN.