Every Blade of Grass 4/4/2021

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

I am not sure what it is about this year but for some reason my fondness for Easter has grown tremendously.  I have always liked it but for some reason this one seems more consequential, more meaningful somehow. This year feels more like all that is springtime and Easter to me.  This year feels more like new birth.  This year feels more like life.  This year to me at least, and I am not even entirely sure I can explain why, feels, even more so than usual, like hope.  I want to celebrate this Easter more fervently.  Maybe the journey we have all traveled since the last Easter and the toll that it has taken on all of us is what is proving this holiday to feel differently.  I am not sure.  It seems to be everywhere to me though. The new leaves on the tree branches seem somehow more delicate and greener.  The white of the dogwood blossoms feels brighter. Even the crisp coolness of the breezes feel more invigorating and brisk while the sun’s beams seem the perfect pairing of warmth and comfort.  Again, perhaps the past year is lending me bias to anything new and beautiful and thriving.  But then again, perhaps this spring filled holiday is actually meant to be special this year. Maybe, just maybe, I’m not only seeing the world through pastel tinted glasses.  Maybe something new is really and truly rising.

As a Christian, this holiday is for me, clearly about far more than brightly decorated eggs and fluffy cotton tails.  This is the culmination of everything that my Faith is hinged upon.  This is the day that Life, once and for all, triumphed over Death.  The magnitude of this is not lost on me and even this seems to be translating itself into every aspect of my surroundings.  Maybe this, of all years, is a time where I need to really dig deeper into what I truly believe in this season.  Then again, perhaps it is not just this holiday that I need to reevaluate and I may need to dive deeper than I had initially realized.

 If you’ve read a fair amount of my blogs, and I am currently sitting here thinking back to what I have written over the course of the past year, you may notice a trend of  light piercing darkness being a topic that makes itself known rather frequently in my writing.  I had noticed a bit but had not made much of it until now when I am starting to think that perhaps I am not learning a lesson that I am supposed to be.  I have a feeling that all this time I was unaware that I was my own target audience with these blogs.  I am starting to get a sneaking suspicion that this one message in particular may be specifically something that I need to read and while I am at it, learn from.  I should maybe take a nice healthy dose of my own medicine.

And really, the message is shouting to me from everywhere.  Maybe it just took a holiday where the text is decorated and the letters have extra flourish for me to actually take and read said note.  Easter is about all that we fight against, and struggle with and suffer through being defeated.  It is all about the Great and Glorious Solution to the never-ending, relentless problem faced by everyone there ever is, was or will be.  The answers are bursting forth from everywhere.  On the sides of the roads what would normally be ragged grass and the occasional unfortunate bit of litter is now thick with life.  There are speckles of butter yellow blossoms everywhere with wild turnips.  These flowers are nestled in grass that is so new and fresh and perfect it shines like ribbons of green satin.  Native azaleas peek from freshly greening forests with bright shades of coral and orange looking like flowers stolen from some tropical climate cascading in unexpected locales and it’s all telling the tale. Everything was dead and grey.  The landscape was lackluster at best and loathsome at worst.  But then, then new life came.  And as it always does, new life changes everything. Ask any new parent. Ask any gardener.  Ask any survivor of catastrophic illness or injury. New life, starting fresh, that’s what makes all the difference.

Former grey skeletons that once stood forlorn against a cold sky are now candelabras that are aflame with soft, green fire.  The sun sets them aglow each day.  It is a completely different being than what it was only weeks ago.  Apparently the One who set all the seasons into motion and invented trees and flowers and taught birds how to weave nests for their eggs is doing His best to tell me a thing or two, as I daresay He always is, and it is simply up to me to listen.  This is the holiday, this is the day that I celebrate everything I believe in its fullness, when the Grand Divine Agenda to take humanity and give them a Magnificent Hope matched only by the status of their unworthiness in magnitude.

I don’t like to, as I suppose no one truly does, but if I were honest with myself I am so terribly undeserving of all the joyous hope that this day brings.  I mean let’s face it, even the best of us have our legitimate flaws and shortcomings; the bits of humanity that like to rear their ugly heads on occasions more frequent than we care to consider.  But, today, oh today means they don’t have to be our downfall!  The eggs sitting expectantly in their nests and the calves bouncing playfully in their fields all are telling me the same thing.  When even the most common blade of grass is uncommon in its splendor I need to pay attention.  This is, to coin John Newton’s illustriously appropriate phrase, the Amazing Grace of Easter. Both you and I don’t have to be resigned to being our typical blemished and faulty selves.  New life is an option for us too no matter how bad we’ve been or how bad things seem.  New life is what Easter is all about.  It’s about One who died but did not stay that way so that we wouldn’t have to either.  The News of this day is so wondrously thrilling and unbelievably remarkable all of nature spreads the message.