Coffee with Joy

Holy Saturday. On a day that is meant to feel darkness and waiting, our family saw a preview of resurrection and hope. Resurrection. Death to life. Something out of nothing. We found Easter on Holy Saturday in San Diego through music, nature, art, history, and connection. We saw the opposite of Easter too, in a line of various religious propaganda, including the darkest of the dark, in a path leading to a fountain in the park. We felt the darkness and the waiting, but the resurrection and the life were there too, overshadowing the darkness with hope.

We spent most of Easter Sunday on a plane back to Chicago from LA. It was the only time I have ever missed church on Easter, as far back as I can remember. Easter Sunday came at the end of Spring Break this year. With our oldest daughter, Hannah, heading to college in the fall, we are well aware that our schedules may never allow us all to travel together on Spring Break again. So we seized the opportunity and planned a rather adventurous trip to California. We started with some long, intense, but great days in LA, then worked our way down the coastline.

We finally caught our breath on Holy Saturday, meandering through the quiet Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego, with my dear cousin, Beth. And that is where we started finding Easter. We found Easter in the music played by an outdoor orchestra while we were walking into the park: “Christ the Lord is Risen Today…” We found Easter in the new life of the flowers blooming in the Japanese Garden after leaving behind a gray, drab Midwest. We found Easter in family connection over lunch. We found Easter in the 15th Century painting of The Crucifixion by Martin Bernat and other religious art of that time period in the San Diego Museum of Art. We found Easter in a church in Old Town, San Diego, complete with lilies and candles which we lit for our Grandmothers, looking forward to being reunited with them in the future resurrection.

I grew up with a more traditional Easter, never missing the church service, the bunny, the basket, and the extended family dinner at my Grandma’s house. I wouldn’t trade those memories for the world, and I have tried to recreate that experience for my own family. This weekend, two weeks after Easter, we are celebrating a birthday with the cousins and we will do the baskets and the egg hunt and even a Peeps tasting bar. Easter might always look more normal for our family in the future, again intermingling the bunny and the resurrection, and that’s okay. But I will never forget this Easter, when we separated the bunny from the resurrection. The year we found resurrection and hope amid the darkness and waiting. The next time you find yourself celebrating a holiday in an unconventional way, start looking for Jesus in unlikely places. For where you seek Jesus, you will find Him (Matthew 7:7).