"It Shall Happen Again"

Here is an Easter poem that I hope blesses you as you prepare your hearts to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

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Cold. Dark. Final sleep.
Is this rest? Is this peace?
This cryptic end that waits us all
This final verdict of the fall.

Who are these lives etched in stone?
Surrendered now to dark unknown.

Years of laughter now suppressed
Wealth collected meaningless.
Legacy gone. Name forgotten.
No more dawn. Final autumn.

Soon we all must have our turn
What they now know, we must learn.
Deny, distract, it matters not
Hide if you must; you will be caught.

What will you make of this cruel reality?
What will you do with your own mortality?

The cynic says, “Nothing. For nothing awaits”
No meaning, no purpose, no heavenly fate.
Fortunate dust, that’s all we are
Borrowed matter of a distant star.

There is no soul. There is no hope.
Just vain existence with which to cope.
You had your turn with this thing called life
Now fall asleep to the nothingness night.

Yet this cold hard dogma is not without cracks
Easy to imagine, impossible to enact
We all carry on with longings undaunted
Perhaps we are secular, but the secular is haunted.

Can you really obey subjective morality?
Can you really inhabit a pointless reality?
Can lovers embrace as though love is a lie?
Are you not troubled by the question, why?

These seeds of transcendence are there for a reason.
They whisper God’s presence. They echo of Eden.
They’re hounding; they’re haunting; they’re speaking to you.
They’re telling a story you long to be true.

A story where death is no longer the victor
Where life overwhelms what once was so bitter
Where sorrow gives way to immeasurable joy
Where guilt has no say, where pain is destroyed.

Wishful thinking? I’d tend to agree.
Were it not for a strange Nazarene.
His claims? Outrageous. His deeds? Omnipotent.
His love? Contagious. His promise? Magnificent.

Devine intentions now broken through
Almighty God is on the move
Entering in to our vale of tears
“Fear not,” He says, “your King is here.”

Here to turn our wrongs to right
Here to awaken the dawn of our night
Here to proclaim the forgiveness of sin
Here to crush Satan. He is here to win.

But then the cross. Then our King in a grave.
All promise, all hope, bound to a cave.
Another great story ‘neath the ruins of history
But in the grandest of twists, the cave was empty.

Calvary’s darkness now Easter morning
The Lamb who was silenced has come forth roaring
With glorious news to a world despairing
His promise to us? This is only the beginning.

This, the first moment of a new reality
This, the first chapter of a whole new story
This, the first birth of a new humanity
This, the first twinkling of a whole new glory

Jesus the firstruit of resurrection harvest
Like our Savior before us we shall rise from the darkness.
Yes ashes to ashes, yes dust to dust,
But what happened to Jesus will happen to us.

Awakened to dwell in perfect creation
Awakened to claim our no condemnation
Every pain restored. Every sadness untrue.
No more war. All things new.

“But It’s just impossible,” our doubts still cry
Yes but Easter now lets us reply
With certain heart and audacious grin
“If it happened once; it shall happen again.”