You know, because we've been talking on Sunday mornings about "Resurrection on a Thursday." So, have you been paying attention? maybe just a little more frequently?
Was there anything that happened last week that made you say "wow"? Where you saw something like new life breaking through in an unexpected way?
I'm not talking about full-blown medical miracles here; if you did see someone rise from the grave last Thursday then please please please let me know! What I'm hoping for is a bit more modest: that we'll begin to notice the myriad "small" ways that God is already at work around us in ways that don't necessarily move the needle on the miracle meter.
Not really those times where you believe God rescued you from some imminent harm, but those times where:
You felt God speaking, maybe whispering, "life" into the dead or dying places in your spirit.
You found some inkling of hope in a situation or relationship that felt hopeless.
You sensed God in the smile or the tender touch of some other human in a moment where you felt alone.
I do pray that God's kindness is intruding into your life in radical and obvious ways, but sometimes the effects of resurrection aren't those things we're likely to announce on social media or tell our grandkids about, but the countless tiny moments where we see signs of life instead of – not necessarily DEATH per se – but stagnation, stasis, inertia, boredom, flatness, and disorientation.
The kinds of things in other words, that don't happen on Easter Sunday but on a Thursday, or a Wednesday, or a...well, you get the idea. The point of the "It's Still Easter" sermon series isn't necessarily to jump start resurrection in your life but merely to trigger our awareness of the ways in which God is already creating new life and we just haven't taken the time to notice.
Tomorrow, we're looking at the story of "Lazarus and His Sisters", one of the truly BIG examples of resurrection. But, I believe that it's in these extraordinary examples of rising where we can learn to notice the more ordinary ones.