You have your breath The exhale The inhale This life force that gently and quietly and unassumingly surges through you In And out Your breath enters and then leaves your body And your body is made up of all these molecules Which make up these cells Which make up these systems You are this odd blend of soul and spirit, dust and bone You have hair and eyelids and toes and elbows and knees and opinions And you make assumptions and you have expectations You are this potluck of emotions and feelings and physicality You are part mountain and part ocean and part Spirit You are a fascinating endless mystery and then you move about This world And there is cement and taxes And there is your insurance agent and there is the person you buy bread from And you have people that you love and you have people who are like human sandpaper They annoy you to no end There are people you embrace you embrace on a regular day And there are people that you pass by one on a street in a large city on the other side of the world and you will never be close to them again as long as you live You live in this body with this breath that comes And goes And then in this body you experience this world with wind and waves and trees and rocks and deserts And mountains It's all part of what you call your life And in these experiences with this breath coming and going And in this body, with these people that you know and this set of circumstances that is called Your life You have these experiences and some of these experiences fill you with hope And with life Sometimes it's a beautiful song Sometimes it's holding the hand of your young daughter Sometimes it's sitting by the bed as your grandfather takes his last breath Sometimes it's a holiday meal with relatives Sometimes it's friends from school Sometimes it's that moment at work where you get the sense that what you're doing Matters We have these moments of meaning, these moments of substance These moments when we think "yes, there is a point to this" And then there are the other moments The moments of despair The moments when it doesn't go well There are the long cold silences There is that thing that happens when the alarm goes off in this morning and you think "another day" There is that thing that happens when you are driving to work and you think "why? what's the point?" There is that small habit that grew and grew until now it's like a destructive pattern You don't know what to do with it And so what happens ever so gradually If we do not guard our hearts Is that we come to be gradually overtaken by this pervasive sense that there might not be a point to it Underneath it all it actually is random and pointless And so what happens is those good, beautiful, true, moving, inspiring moments The lump in the throat The tear in the eye That sense when you embrace somebody and it feels like you're holding the Universe in your hands Those moments start to feel like they're just little detours And escapes from how it really is Which is cold, dark, lonely, and pointless Resurrection is the opposite Resurrection says oh, no, no, no, no, no. Those glimpses, those are actually the real thing They're the thing that undergird the whole thing Just that moment when that person said that kind word and it ignited a whole new world in your heart That was just an aberration from how things are That was a sign, a symbol, a glimpse, a glance of how it actually is Resurrection says that this is our home and that our home is good Resurrection says that not only is our home good But everything about our home that is wrong, twisted, broken, destructive, flawed, and failed Everything about it Whether it may hurt and whether it may be something like cancer that is real And however big the bruise is And however much blood there is on the floor Whatever it is However real it is And however much it broke your heart It is, in the end, in some really, really hard to describe way Temporary That in fact, there is a new creation bursting forth Right here in the middle of this one And there is a new heaven and a new earth coming together And that this Jesus, in his resurrection insists that in the conquering of death He has brought about something new Something you can trust That whatever is holding you down Whatever feels like it's drowning you Whatever feels like it's a weight chained to your ankle Does not have the last word That is resurrection Now, a guy rising from the dead 2, 000 years ago Can I prove that happened? No, no one can And be very suspicious of anybody who says they can prove that And be especially suspicious of sermons where people spend 45 minutes proving to you that a man actually rose from the dead Nobody knows What we know is there has been a community of people for several thousand years Who insist that something happened That a tomb is empty And that when you trust this story something will be unleashed And unlocked in your heart And in your life So yes, it's history But it's a bigger, better, wider, more expansive understanding of history So for those who think "What? Come on. How far fetched is that?" Try it Try living in this story Try trusting that all those little glimpses and glances of hope and beauty and truth and light That they weren't aberrations They weren't mistakes They weren't some blip in the system They were actually showing you what it's really like That this new life is as close as the breath you just took And the breath you're about to take