The New Job gives me Good Friday off, for which I'm grateful. It means a day with E and hopefully a good service in the evening.
Easter is easily my favorite holiday, but I acquired this favoritism late. I think probably it came along with the awakening that came with "Just Showed Up," but like most developments I suppose it happened in stages and—an artifact of my forgetfulness and insensibility—imperceptibly. Growing pains are pretty obvious when they're happening, but I find that my memory works a bit like my male-pattern blindness: I can remember random birthdays but can't figure out what I came downstairs for.
It feels like there was a time when the resurrection was remote and suddenly it wasn't. I don't think it happened that way, exactly, but it does have a way of sneaking up on you. Tim Keller relates that when he finished reading The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright he said, "It really happened!" And this from one of the more famous Christians of our generation. Not of course that he didn't believe in the resurrection beforehand, but the historical plausibility has a way of gripping you when someone looks through the case so thoroughly. (I don't quite remember what I thought when I finished the book, but it was probably something like, "Finally" after all the euphoria wore off.)
It's a little odd to say that the most likely explanation is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics—but then information theorists will tell you that the second law is "only" statistical anyway. Entropy really could happen in reverse; eucatastrophe really is possible: everything sad will come untrue.
Every year around this time, I think again about the liturgical calendar and how it's probably more useful for keeping me mindful. Of course, I promptly forget it and pass along to the rest of my every day. There are distractions everywhere—not bad distractions, but distractions nonetheless, and reorienting myself by carving out these moments is difficult. (Even now I'm trying to find appropriate music and find myself hovering somewhere around the Joy to the World and He Came, He Saw, He Conquered, neither of which is particularly good for Maundy Thursday. I guess, though, that Isaac Watts did riff off the Hallelujah Chorus for Joy to the World.)
A 2016 summary would take a bit much time to put together today, and every time I look through pictures I find myself lost again. It's the imperceptibility leaking through in another form, I guess.
So while it pains me to do so, I will leave with two songs: Joy to the World (I apologize that it's Pentatonix), and the more-appropriate-for-Good-Friday arioso from Messiah, "Thy rebuke hath broken his heart / Behold and see if there be any sorrow."
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