It’s Easter weekend which means, among many things, there’ll be a hunt for eggs in the front yard.
It’s her first opportunity, with her newfound ability to toddle about on her own, that she’ll navigate her way robotically from one brightly colored egg to another and fill her little basket.
She’ll be dressed in her Sunday-go-to-meeting best but, given the coronavirus, there’ll be no church to attend to demonstrate unlimited steps without falling, no showing off her patent leather shoes that don’t really buckle.
At the same time, or shortly thereafter, across the state will drive another family member to visit the graveside of her husband, her first opportunity on the first anniversary of his homegoing.
It was on that day, one year ago, as she entered her car to visit him, that the radio began to play, upon turning the key, “Love Has A Name.”
One little toddler, whose backstory makes her precious beyond description.
One husband, father and grandfather who for over 50 years has been faithful in each of those responsibilities impacting generations.
Each bringing tears, even the curly-haired little one, happily filling her basket, in the so few months since her birth: thousands of miles driving places we’d rather not have gone; hundreds of hours spent stumbling through the maze of grief; buckets of untold, how-could-this-happen anguish.
And yet joy too.
Baskets – buckets really – of precious memories.
How important is one little lamb, one full-grown sheep?
Just one, even though there are 99 others who are accounted for who’ve not – through some dreadful circumstance, and all circumstances are dreadful are they not in stories like this – become separated from where they belong?
Resurrection Sunday answers that question.
