Home Tools for your Journey April 11

Friday, April 11

Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise, O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.
—Isaiah 26:19

If we are alert and awake to life, we see resurrection happening all around us. New shoots push up from the black soil to become the velvet flowers of spring. The night sheds its dark drape and dawn is reborn. Relationships that have been broken and have left behind the blackest ash are restored in sunlight's hour.

An absent loved one calls, and the sound of their voice is like a song from heaven. A new job is offered to us after unemployment left us feeling isolated and insignificant. The shadows that confined our soul like a tiger in a cage suddenly lift, and an endless ocean of freedom stretches before us.

With the signs of resurrection around us, we really need not fear that death is the final voice. There is no need to stealthily lurk through life hoping death won't find us, nor rush like a constantly moving hummingbird trying to experience everything before death comes to call.

Because we witness resurrection every day, we can live each day slowly, fully, openly—savoring it like the tastiest morsel of a gourmet dish. Death will inevitably come—it does, in fact, come into our lives every day. And, resurrection will also inevitably come—it does, in fact, come into our lives every day.

So stop trying to avoid or run faster than death. Instead, simply drink in each day with the complete certainty that all that dies will be reborn.

O God, when the dust of death hides the shine of my soul, let me wait quietly until you wipe the dust away, so that I see the light of the sun once again.

The Signposts for April are written by Renée Miller and originally appeared on explorefaith.org in May 2004.