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Dear Covenant Family,
It was a glorious Easter morning at Covenant, and if you couldn’t be here, I hope you get a chance to view the service online. After the service, children looked for Easter eggs on our front lawn and beautiful Easter flowers were taken home and delivered to homebound members.
Easter isn’t just a day; it is a whole season. For the next 50 days (until Pentecost), we get to practice hope. It’s so much easier to practice hope if we do it together. So, find a sunrise or a sunset, start a practice of prayer, make someone laugh, really believe that Jesus loves you.
Benediction: A Blessing for Easter Sunday
(Adapted from The Lives We Actually Have, by Kate Bowler, page 206)
“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week… Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
—John 20:19, ESV
Oh God, we stretch out our hands to you in this early Easter darkness.
We need you to pull us up and set us on our feet again,
for we are weak and tired.
God, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Spirit, have mercy.
God, on that first Easter morning
while it was still dark,
one woman went alone to the tomb
to do what could be done to honor you,
though hope had drained away.
Two bright angels met her there, and then –
how is it possible? –
you were there. fully alive, beyond belief.
Blessed are we who stretch out our hands to you
in doubt and grief,
in sickness of body and mind and spirit,
our prayers not fully realized,
rejoicing… anyway.
For that is what makes us Easter people:
carrying forth the realized hope of the Resurrected One,
singing our alleluias great and small,
while it is still dark.
Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
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