What a strange and different Easter Sunday. If we’re celebrating today, we are doing so household by household, “together” by virtue of streamed services and chatting electronically. Thank God for these means of connection that can compensate for some aspects of not being together in person! But even the clearest live-stream or the most fun zoom hangout cannot compare with being and celebrating together in person.

In strange times like these, we might be tempted to celebrate Easter a little less enthusiastically, with more disappointment than joy. I know I am tempted to do so myself. But my encouragement to my own heart and to yours as well is that an Easter like this one has the potential to be one where the hope of a Savior who conquered sin, disease, pain, sorrow, and death is all the more real to us. As we become more aware of the power of these things to steal our joy, to strike at those we love, and to leave us bereft of the things we would normally take comfort in, would that we run all the more enthusiastically to the one who has overcome them!

As we become more aware of the darkness that surrounds us in the world, would we cling all the more tightly to the Light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome.

He is risen! He is really, truly, and actually risen. Would we still find joy in that today in the midst of all we face.

“Rise, heart; Thy Lord is risen.”

—George Herbert, “Easter”