Dear Friends,
Alleluia, He is Risen!
The Lord is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!
Bless us all in this Easter season, and special blessings to our friends in the Eastern tradition who celebrated Easter just this past Sunday.
This week, my wife and I signed a lease on what will be our 7th address in the last decade. We move a lot, following our schooling and work, packing up our lives, resettling, reorganizing. And one thing that plays a huge role in whether or not I feel oriented and secure in my life is walking.
I have a reasonably good sense of direction if I’m on foot. I absorb the details of my surroundings, remembering turns based on what landmarks speak to me. But I don’t just orient myself to new locations on foot – I enjoy it. When I was younger, I used to go on walks when I was upset, escaping family gatherings to walk around my neighborhood. As an adult, I’ve often opted to walk places, refusing to factor in distance or the danger of the route. When I think about Jesus’s appearance to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, then, I think about my own perambulations.
Unlike many other central stories of our faith, the Road to Emmaus is one that entered my consciousness later in life. I undoubtedly heard it regularly as a child, but it didn’t make the cut in terms of Sunday School workbook stories and I can’t recall any particular sermons about it. But some years ago now, back when I lived in Atlanta, I recall hearing this story in ways that made it stand out, though I’m still not sure why. Maybe it was that we had a partnership with the amazing non-profit Emmaus House. Or maybe it was that I heard that sermon alongside its retelling in Knowing Jesus in a New Way. I can’t say. But the Road to Emmaus was suddenly real to me.
The disciples were traveling somewhere around 7 miles as they walked along the road that day – far but not unmanageable – when they were joined by someone who seemed not to know about all the events of the past few days. This is the way of those days following resurrection: persistent uncertainty, but most people, it seems, had heard the news, at least, even if no one quite understood it – and maybe that’s a big part of what this story holds for us. Even in this time of uncertainty, they needed to share what they knew so far.
Hallelujah Anyway
Here is what I know: that sometimes I feel so broken or the world feels so shattered that God seems impossibly far away. And other times, God feels so undeniably present and great that I want to offer all praise, but I don’t know where to begin; God is too great, too unknowable for our words or images. How can we offer praise in light of all those feelings?
Easter answers us. It says - Hallelujah Anyway.
The Rend Collective’s “Hallelujah Anyway” has been one of my themes this Easter season. It is a song that refuses to wait for the perfect conditions for praise, but charges ahead into a posture of worship. In that way, it’s a song that helps us act our way into belief or joy in those moments when it feels unattainable. It lets us sing praise when our words feel insufficient. And it says our praise is worth offering, even though nothing is equal to the greatness of God.
What do we have to lose? Not a thing, it would seem.
But what do we have to gain? Deeper faith, greater closeness to the mystery. Where knowledge exceeds us, we can still sing praise.
Ways Of Praise
Children’s storybook Bibles have come a long way in recent years, and the latest one on my radar – out this summer from Shine – is The Peace Table. In many ways, this is a Bible designed for teaching; it’s full of questions and prompts and it’s certainly designed for classroom use. But those questions and “Peace Paths,” through-lines that connect various story themes, are also a gift to families who may feel unequipped to teach their children about faith, something many of us in church run into a lot. Storybook bibles without those tools have a place, certainly, but this one does a lot of open-ended work while also being so very beautiful. I can’t get over this illustration of the “Strong Sisters” (Mahlah, Noah, Haglah, Milcah, and Tirzah) from the book of Numbers.
It is damp and rainy as I write this letter, but spring is cracking open the world, creating a moment that feels meant for praise, for endless Hallelujahs. So, how might we sing in harmony with this season? It’s time to get outside (at least if your allergies can handle it!) –
In conjunction with Noah’s Ark, the Peace Table recommends using the names of colors to praise God, grouping the subjects of our prayers by color. For young children, one way to supplement that prayer would be with a classic nature bracelet which uses tape to collect bits of nature as children explore outside.
Looking for a way to expand this perhaps elementary-seeming prayer practice to older kids? STEAM activities – and also TikTok – are your answer because, let’s be real, have you made it to color matching TikTok? It’s downright amazing stuff, and older kids (and adults) can try their hand at matching the colors of natural items by mixing paints. Or, for a different kind of experimentation, explore what pigments you can make from natural elements, and what you can create with those pigments.
In the glorious colors of the rainbow, in the words we speak, in the things we create, we glorify God. In a world that can push us away from praise, let us declare Hallelujah Anyway.
Peace,
Bird