Easter Friday: Overcoming Evil
I was talking to someone this week who lost her grandmother to Covid-19. The conversation was about the fragility of life, some personal regret, some misplaced anger, and deep sorrow. She was supposed to go back to Ontario to see her grandma this May and takes her two-year-old daughter along.
Life is full of joy and full of sorrow. That was how the conversation went. She talked about her memories of many visits to her grandparents' farm, going on trips alone with them, making hot-cross buns with her grandma, trying dim sum for the first time, her grandpa's heart attack and his passing...We went through almost 30 years of her life.
The last few weeks might have been the most challenging time that many of us have to deal with in our entire life. We might not all experience loss of life. However, we all experience the loss of what life used to be. In some ways, this Covid-19 pandemic has robbed "Joie de Vivre" from many of us. No freedom just to drop by to see friends, to hug someone we miss, to go for a picnic in a city park, to go to a concert or a play, to cook with family...
Easter reminds us of what we have lost. The most important loss in human life is the loss of innocence. Innocence does not mean "not guilty" in the context of Easter. Its meaning is "not damaged by sin".
In some ways, much of what we experience during this pandemic is similar to what Jesus' disciples experienced after his death and wondered about his resurrection: waiting anxiously, being skeptical in some ways, relying on one another, grief and sorrow, fear and hope, feeling vulnerable and out of sync within themselves and with one another. Our loss of innocence has been erased by the promise of God's forgiveness. So let us pray with the expectation that our struggles with Covid-19 will be overcome as well.
Happy Easter to you and your family.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)