This morning I was struck by the fact that I can barely remember Easter.
I couldn’t recall anything about the date or celebration of Easter in my life this year—not even what month it was in without consulting a calendar. I had a vague sense that I never finished out my Lenten practice of watching episodes of The Chosen.
My inability to locate a memory of Easter 2026 was immediately accompanied by another upsetting realization: my struggle to remember Easter is more than just a calendar and memory-related fact. Barely remembering Easter is a snapshot of the the way my heart has felt at times in recent days. I’ve had more stumbling in numbness than in thriving in new life, more mucking around in surviving one day to the next than living in triumph or victory.
The recent intersection of moving my Dad to a nursing home two days before graduating my youngest child after twelve years of homeschooling is an intensified microcosm of the many transitions I have been living in for much of this year.
None of this is a surprise to God.
He continues to gently nudge my heart toward His even as I am sometimes swamped by struggle or doubt. That is His kind of love—faithfulness in the face of my faithlessness.
On a run a few Saturdays ago, I was struggling to push through a little uphill section of a pathway alongside the river that runs through my town. What would have been an easy, mindless stretch for me two years ago has turned into a grind of mental discipline as I reteach my body and mind how to run distance again after my Achilles surgery.
While I was struggling with my run, I raised my eyes to the horizon trying to distract myself. The thing that captured my attention was a tall, dark-branched, bare tree snaking upward above the rest of the tree line. My eye was drawn to this dead thing without effort. I couldn’t resist looking at the ugly barrenness that captivated me, despite all the lush springtime landscape surrounding it.
The Holy Spirit quickly showed me the metaphor. This instance of my physical eyes being drawn to the dead tree mirrored the way my emotional and spiritual eyes have lately been drawn to focus only on the challenges and heartaches of these intense days of multigenerational caregiving. Many days all I have been able to see is chaos, decay, discouragement, and the disappearance of things I hold dear and love.
The Spirit whispered: “Shift your gaze.”
Moving my eyes away from the towering dead tree, I looked to the crest of the hill I was headed up. On this particular stretch of the path there is a large wooden cross topping the rise in the landscape. That is where the Spirit directed my eyes as I continued to grind and struggle with my run.
I shifted my gaze, I was suddenly blindsided by an unexpected truth… the cross is another dead tree. It is literally a tree of death. But the cross is a dead tree of a different kind. That dead tree thousands of years ago wasn’t what it appeared to be on the surface. What looked like a tree of death was a tree which gives birth to powerful new life for those who have eyes to see. If you look closely at the cross through the eyes of the Spirit, you can see life flowing from it in every direction.
Can you imagine how devastating that cross must have appeared to Jesus’ disciples on Good Friday? A stark, unwanted, specter of death, chaos, and finality towering over the landscape of their lives.
But God…
In the fullness of time, through the resurrection of Jesus, God revealed that in His Kingdom and in His economy, there is always more going on than meets the eye. Dead trees aren’t dead ends. Dead things can birth new life. Challenges can create strength. Suffering can birth spiritual resilience. All that paradox is centered in the story of Easter—the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.
That morning the Holy Spirit invited me to run with my eyes not on the deadness and darkness that sometimes towers threateningly over the landscape of my life. He invited me instead to gaze upon the cross, to meditate on the mystery of suffering that turns out to be strength, the mystery of death that brings unquenchable life. To look past the surface of things and see the work He is doing in the unseen. That is his invitation to you, as well.
Each day of our lives is different. Some days the path is smoother than others. Some days we are so tired and weak that a hill that previously seemed like nothing feels like an insurmountable mountain. Some days we wake up and realize that we have forgotten Easter.
But God is not different. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). When we are faithless, He remains faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). The One who began a good work in you will be sure to bring it to completion (Philippians 1:6).
Get out and take a walk with Jesus and notice how you respond to the landscape you are journeying together—literally and metaphorically. Spend some time meditating on the power and the paradox of the cross. Or do a little Easter “reset” and read through the crucifixion and resurrection narratives in the Bible again.
Wherever your path takes you, may you find more of Him.