A New Creation

Genesis:  1: 1-5
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

This is normally not a passage for Easter Day.  What happened to the empty tomb?  What happened to the dawn of the Eastern morn?  What happened to the Resurrected Christ?  I actually think it's all there:  A formless void--nothingness, chaos, injustice, persecution, evil, death--is recreated into order while God's Spirit sweeps across its being.  A light appears...a first light...a light that has never been before...a light separated from the darkness of death and despair and hell.  It is the dawn of the Light.  It is the first day of the New Creation.  Christ the Lord has Risen!  ALLELUIA!  ALLELUIA!  ALLELUIA!...

This thing that God has done...this turning despair into hope and death into life...is surely the greatest act of Creation!  God again took a formless void, an instrument of hopelessness and death, a manifestation of denial and betrayal, of injustice and evil, and there...there in the first light of this morning...we see glorious Light...we see hope...we see life as we've never seen it before.  There...there in the light of the dawn is our eternity!

Welcome, happy morning!  Age to age shall say: 
"Hell today is vanquished, Heaven is won today."

Lo! the dead is living, God forevermore! 

Him, their true creator, All his works adore.

Earth with joy confesses, Clothing her for spring, 

All good gifts returned with her returning King,

Bloom in every meadow, leaves on every bough,

speak his sorrows ended; Hail his triumph now.

Thou, of life the author, Death didst undergo, 

Tread the path of darkness, saving strength to show;

Come then, true and faithful, now fulfill thy word; 

Tis thine own third morning, Rise, O buried Lord!

Welcome, happy morning!  Age to age shall say: 

"Hell today is vanquished, Heaven is won today!

Lo! the dead is living, God forevermore! 

Him, their true creator, All his works adore.

                                          ("Welcome Happy Morning", hymn by Fortunatus (ca. 535-600), trans. by John Ellerton)   

Christ the Lord is Risen!  ALLELUIA!...And there was evening and there was morning the first day...

Grace and Peace,

Shelli