Acts 10:34a, 37-43 / Col 3:1-4 or Col 5:6b-8 / Jn 20:1-9 or Lk 24:1-12
An old soldier, blind and paralyzed, lay in his bed at the Veterans' Hospital. He'd been there a long time, sad and lonely, and now he had yet another roommate. Unlike the grouches who had gone before, the new man seemed jolly and friendly. So the old soldier asked the new man, whose bed was by the window, to tell him what was going on outside. The man responded with gusto. He described the flowers bursting into bloom, the birds hopping across the lawn, the postman making his rounds, the children riding their bikes, and much more.
It became a daily ritual, the man by the window helping the blind old soldier connect with the wonderful world outside. But one day the man by the window died, and his bed was taken by a new man. With some trepidation the old soldier asked him, "Would you describe for me what's going on outside our window."
The new man looked out the window, paused awhile and then said, "I don't know what good it'll do. There's nothing outside this window but a blank wall."
Nothing there! Nothing but a blank wall! That's the fear that eventually haunts every heart, the fear that we're boxed in by the blank walls of our mortality: we're born, we live, we die, and there is no escape. Just nothing, forever and ever.
That's our fear, but it's not the truth. And somehow that happy old soldier by the window knew that in his heart. "There's more," whispered his heart, and he saw through the wall of that hospital and through the wall of his own mortality and his own dying.
Our hearts are whispering the same words, "There's more than you can see right now, much, much more on the other side of the wall. You are not made for nothingness." That's what our heart is whispering. And all our life long we've hoped against hope that that whisper is not an illusion.
Now at last God himself speaks to us out loud — not in words but in mighty deeds: He has raised our brother Jesus from the dead. And in doing that he is saying to us, "You can trust that whisper in your heart: Life is what I made you for. Not death, but life. Life with me forever!"
That is God's promise to us this Easter morning: To live with him forever! Let us rejoice in him and be glad!
