I looked across the lunch table in my preschool class and noticed a little girl with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was quiet, but obviously something or someone had upset her.
I knelt beside her in the middle of the noisy chattering group of 4 year olds and asked why she was crying. She pointed to her friend sitting next to her and said, "She said that Jesus is gonna die on Easter! I don't want Easter to come!"
I hugged her and said that her friend made a little mistake and that on Easter, Jesus is alive and that's what Easter is all about. About Jesus being alive and not dead at all! By this time the whole class was quiet and listening to me. She smiled and said she felt better now.
Our preschool is a Christian school but we don't talk about Bible stories much in my class. I did make an exception this last week though. I told a story of a little girl with brown hair, brown eyes and freckles on her nose named Susie. Our Circle Time true story was about the Sunday many years ago when the little brown haired girl came running and shouting into her parents arms in a church sanctuary, yelling, "Mommy, he's alive, he's alive!!"
My mother told me this story about when I was only 3 or 4 and a Sunday School teacher must have somehow got the message across to us little ones with clarity. I don't remember this moment, but I love it.
Today my main big thought is simply that He is alive. Jesus is alive! I will admit that I do not feel Him as clearly as I did years ago, but I still know and believe that He is alive in me.
When so much around us is negative news, this is the good news. The BEST news. I am sitting here in my living room feeling weepy, listening to Keith Green and 2nd Chapter of Acts ( I am old, you guys. Whatever).
In a few minutes I will get in my little yellow truck and drive around the corner to the sweet Methodist church behind my house. I will bask in the gentle music and smiling faces. I will rejoice in the knowing that He is alive.
Happy Easter y'all. (Yeah, I said Y'all.)
Susie
UPDATE: I am home from the Easter service and this time it was my turn to be the quiet one with tears streaming down her cheeks. But my tears were an overflow of thankfulness for my Jesus. He knows me, loves me and is alive today. In the people around me and in the swaying trees in my backyard that I am looking at just now as I sit in my yard and tap these keys.
Once again I choose belief, I choose faith, I choose to trust the unseen; illogical and fanciful though it may seem. I choose Him. It is so simple and so complicated. But here I am choosing faith.
Here I am quietly shouting, "He is alive. He is alive!"
