We spent Easter Sunday in the woods. I’d hoped that we’d be close enough to town that we could celebrate Christ’s return to life in church, but with some bad weather, sick tramily members, and minor injuries, we took a couple slow days and were in the middle of nowhere.
Good Friday we spent in a hostel. It’d been pouring a cold rain on us. Stealth wasn’t feeling well. My cough was worsening. I’d fallen in the mud a couple times and my ankle was sore. We made it to our halfway point, a pavilion at a picnic area, and found the bathrooms were locked.
That’s an excellent way to crush a thru-hiker’s spirit: lock the bathroom on a rainy day.
There was a hostel near by, and we decided together it would be better for our group to spend the night warm, dry, and recovering, than to push on wet and cold and face the freezing temperatures that night.
Warm and dry, the space heater cranked up high and surrounded by all our soaked shoes, we sat around the kitchen table and read aloud from Matthew the story of Christ’s last supper and death.
The story ends with a heart-wrenching thud, a violent jolt of a heavy stone being dropped into place, the clank of soldiers’ spears as they set up guard.
The curtain is torn, the rocks have split, the sky is black, and our Lord is dead.
Our space heater whines in the background. We sit there in silence as the rain keeps pattering outside. Someone upstairs walks and the old floorboards creak under their footsteps.
It doesn’t hit me quite the same every year. Some years, I’ll admit, it hardly hits me at all. Growing up in a family of faith, it’s a story I know so well I could repeat it in my sleep. Sometimes, some years, it feels like Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday is exactly that: me repeating a story I know for the ten-thousandth time.
This time, it hit me harder, the weight of what happened, the fullness of the prophecies fulfilled, that single statement from a roaring, rioting crowd: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25 ESV)!
Our Lord is dead.
We’d gotten rained on a little bit more when we set out on Saturday, but Hunter First Baptist Church had a tent set up with a propane fire and pulled pork sandwiches. As we sat there and ate, they talked with us, encouraged us, and prayed over us. It was an incredible blessing on a cold day, and lifted all of our spirits immensely. By the time we left their tent, the rain had cleared and we only had five miles left to our shelter. We ate dinner and clambered into our sleeping bags as quickly as possible.
Resurrection Sunday was cold. It hadn’t quite reached freezing over the night, but it was in the 30s. After a couple of nights in the 50s, we’d been getting spoiled.
Vandeventer Shelter became our church. Sprawled out across our sleeping mats in our puffy jackets and sleeping bags, our warm oatmeals in hand, we sat together and read the story of Christ’s triumph over death.
Our Lord has risen.
At the trail magic, Tim had asked us if we’d experienced spiritual growth through the 400 miles we’d walked. I shared the story of Psalm 8 and how God’s Word had been relating so closely to what we’d been seeing.
Now just a day later, God was again using nature to connect with me.
The heaviness we’d felt on Good Friday, standing cold and shivering in the rain and later reading about the crucifixion, was completely reversed.
The sun rose to a clear sky this Easter morning. The clouds and rain that had been following us since Friday disappeared in the night. It was a new day, fresh, beautiful, alive.
Sunday’s cloudless sky continued through the day. We hiked under a brilliant blue sky across green meadows with beautiful scenery. The temperature was perfect. The day was perfect. My soul rejoiced, full of hope and excitement.
Our Lord has risen.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.
John 3:14-17 ESV
Hallelujah.
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