Over the last week—in anticipation of Easter—and especially yesterday—on Easter—I kept hearing the following over and over: “What in your life is in need of a resurrection?”

Certainly this is the theme of every Easter, but this year for some reason, I kept hearing that same question as it related to my own life, my own journey. Not just as it related to Jesus coming out of the grave, literally, but how that truth is working its way into my own story.

Somehow, everyone was writing about and talking about: “What in your life is in need of a resurrection?”

(Or, at least, that’s what I keep hearing. So, OK I GET IT, I’m paying attention.)

I got news of a death recently. A death of a dream, I guess you could say. And it stung. It stings still. It is incredibly difficult to watch something important to you die: whether that’s a relationship, a person, a desire, a dream.

Death stings.

You never get used to it. I don’t think death ever becomes less abrupt.

The invitation I have been hearing over and over this past week is to identify an area of my life that needs a resurrection and then BELIEVE that a resurrection could be possible. In other words, hope. Not the noun hope, but the verb hope.

The ability to hope comes from the idea that what we believed was the end may only just be the beginning.

Which, of course, is the story of Jesus. Yesterday, my pastor spoke on the passage in Luke 24 when Cleopas and his companion are walking on the road to Emmaus and the resurrected Jesus joins them, but they don’t know it’s him.

The story reads, “Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him” (15-16, NIV).

I can think of a few really big things in my life that could use an injection of breath and heartbeat and spirit and vitality. One thing, in particular, that really needs a resurrection. And there’s a certain dangerousness to hoping because it puts us out there on a limb of desire that may not produce.

But I don’t think the cynics win. I don’t think hopelessness wins. And, the story on the road to Emmaus makes me wonder if it’s at all possible that, in fact, Jesus himself is walking in my midst and maybe I’m just not yet recognizing him.

For me, one of the ways Jesus himself is walking with me right now is through these lines from Langston Hughes that he brought to my mind:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up . . .

Or does it explode?

What happened to Jesus and his followers and their dreams of a New Way of living and loving and believing? What happened at the cross? Did it all dry up? Or did it explode?

I’m holding on to the Easter story today as a reminder that sometimes what we believed was an ending might only just be the beginning. Beginnings aren’t always easy, certainly, but they are a promise of possibility. Beginnings are a reminder that, with Jesus, new could be near.

Death stings. Hope explodes. Always, we begin again.

Amen.

What truth hit you in a new a fresh way this Easter?