Wonder.

“Let’s build a huge wall!” My 4-year-old grandson Briar spent a couple days with us this week. So we layered the multi-colored cardboard bricks as high as we could. “I’m a bull,” Briar declared. Down on all fours, he pawed the ground dramatically, then hurtled toward our mock wall, bursting through and sending bricks flying in all directions. Beaming triumphantly, he declared, “Let’s do it again.” So we did. Several times.

The imagination and wonder of a child are captivating. The way they look at simple things with unbridled curiosity. The hilarious things they say. They way they snuggle with unabashed delight and affection. The innocence. The mischievousness. Even the melodramatic despair of having to pause the Cars movie and go to bed. Wonder is a quality that tends to ebb as adults, but as Jesus said so poignantly, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Let’s get childlike together.

Perhaps more than any other day of the year, Easter is an invitation to wonder.

How many times have you heard an Easter Sunday sermon? At 56 years old, I reckon I’ve heard about 56! Easter Sunday (or Resurrection Day, as it was called in my upbringing) is a time of great jubilation…deeply anticipated as the shadow of Lent darkens into the blackness of Good Friday, then breaks forth in brilliant, holy celebration.

Saturday is that awkward pause when time stands still. That deep breath between the sorrow of the cross and the joy of an empty grave. It seems to me that we live our lives in this pause: a bitter taste lingering on the tongue even while the eastern sky is creased with crimson hope. We live in the between, both cosmically and personally.

This year I found myself wondering, What would it look like to view the classic story of Easter through a contemplative lens, the way a child would see it? Let’s explore that idea. To become childlike, sometimes we have to “unlearn” what we think we know and start over. Truly, “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Children are simple. They don’t do complicated. By the time they enter the playground, children know what both love and cruelty look like. The Easter story is sometimes staged in the shadow of a vengeful God who demands blood sacrifice. Only adults can contort that narrative into something good; children know better. When we’re young, we learn quickly that pain is part of life, and when painful things happen, we want companionship and comfort. We want to know that we’re not alone. We want someone to share our hurt and reassure us that suffering will pass, that joy will return.

This, for me, is the contemplative message of Easter: utter solidarity with our human experience. On the cross, Jesus willingly joined us in the awful trauma of the human condition; in the resurrection, Jesus assures us that death doesn’t have the final word. That life is greater than death, as truly for us as for him. That “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Henri Nouwen puts it like this: “In a way, his agony is not simply the agony of approaching death. It is also the agony of being out of control and of having to wait. [Jerome here: This is a great example of Jesus sharing the human condition.] It is the agony of a God who depends on us to decide how to live out the divine presence among us. It is the agony of the God who, in a very mysterious way, allows us to decide how God will be God.” Talk about humility! What extreme vulnerability God has undertaken to give us children the freedom that love requires.

Jesus came to show us the long-suffering compassion of the Father’s heart, and to model the way of the kingdom. And the way of the kingdom is the path of descent. Just look at the Beatitudes to see what’s valuable in God’s eyes: poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, and willingness to suffer. Which is why Jesus didn’t come as a conquering ruler but a humble servant, ready and willing to die. And why Christ-followers shouldn’t try to power up politically but simply serve the suffering, joining the weak in solidarity and offering the timeless hope of resurrection.

“If Jesus is right,” Richard Rohr observes, “[God] has chosen to descend [from Incarnation through Crucifixion]—in almost total counterpoint with our humanity that is always trying to climb, achieve, perform, and prove itself. [Philippians 2] says that Jesus leaves the ascent to God, in God’s way, and in God’s time…. Trust the down, and God will take care of the up.”

Now this sounds like good news: a God who takes on skin to join us in our sorrows and invite us children through suffering into resurrection! For my heart, this is worthy of an Easter story.

growing the soul

Get in touch with your “inner child” now. What does that childlike part of you need most? Look to your Father, knowing that God’s every intention toward you is good and kind.

serving the world

Our world community is suffering. Let’s remind ourselves that even the greatest of sufferings will yield to the hope of God’s redemption.

takeaway

Love wins.