Easter Sunday: The Robin Sings Again.




The next time you are up early on a morning in the spring, walk outside your door and listen. You will almost certainly hear this song, the dawn song of a robin.  Long before the sun came up, that robin was singing as it prepared its nest. Even when the rest of the earth is sleeping in the darkness, even when much of the earth is still gripped by the icy fingers of winter, the robin knows a secret. The robin knows that spring is coming.

Did you ever wonder how a robin knows that song, and how it knows how to build its nest? They don't go to school and take a "nest building class", of course. They don't even learn it from their parents. But when a robin sings for the first time, and when it builds its first nest, it's following an instinct that it was born with. It doesn't have to have hope, or faith, or belief. The robin just knows. And it follows this truth without even having to think about it.

On Easter, God is asking us to remember what the robin already knows.  Long ago, when you became you for the first time, God did something miraculous for you. God gave each of you an unbreakable bond to life. God also gave you a promise to remember even in dark and cold times:  Spring is coming, for you and for the world. You don't have to find it, or make it happen. It will just come.  That's God's love, and it isn't a dream or a myth. It is certain. As certain as the morning song of the robin. As certain as the spring.

This is why Jesus said in Matthew 6:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ... Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 

On Easter, Jesus rose from the tomb that everyone around him thought was permanent death. It was actually never in doubt, and Jesus knew this, even when everyone else couldn't believe it was coming.

So, here is my Easter Prayer for each of you.

Enduring and Miraculous God,

Let us begin this prayer by remembering that you have taught us, through prophecy, through experience, and through Christ, that there is a light that shines in all places. A light that is released once we dig down into our most heartfelt places to remember your miraculous love for us. 

Lord, help us to carry that love into this world, to help this love stretch far enough to reach those who need healing and reassurance, to bring hope to those who need it the most during this season.

Help us carry Your Love to those needing comfort in the cold and the darkness.  To those experiencing loneliness, or poverty, or depression.  Help us hear their prayers, oh God.  Help us be your warmth and light to them.

Help us carry Your Love to those who have prayed to You and are still awaiting an answer.  To the sick, to the lost, to those out of work, to those out of ideas.  Help us hear their prayers, oh God.  Help us to make sure they are not alone in the dark.

Lord, you are the maker of miraculous things, even amidst the clouds of uncertainty.. You bring hope to those of us who can muster it, perhaps that we might give that hope to those who have none left. Let us keep our eyes open for one another, so that as few of us as possible have to be alone in the dark. Let us keep our eyes open to You, so that we, too, might remember that we are never be alone.  For you have taught us, in your enduring light, that miracles are not things that happen to us, but rather things that happen through us when we just let them run their course.

Amen.