Sunrise over Napier, New Zealand March, 2014

Sometimes I stand in the darkness and feel its power. It is smothering; dampening; oppressive; crushing all hope. Today near dawn, I stood in the darkness and felt the power of that hopelessness. This is not the world I anticipated. Gone are the tenets of unselfish love; of benevolence; of respect for others — religious beliefs included; of manners and kindness; of true love. Gone is my God, seemingly erased and eradicated by a new god that looks back at me each morning from my own mirror and from the countless perfect snapshots of a billion selfies. Gone is kindness and empathy and warmth. Gone is dialogue in the face of endless monologuing.

My feelings are not unique. I try and imagine a dark room filled with sorrow and shadows where men and women who had lived and walked and breathed with the eternal Hope huddled in tear filled terror for their very lives and for they future. Their Promise was dead; killed by the cold, heartless minds of religious rigidity and political power mongers who could never understand true Mercy. I try and feel their loss; their desperation and it is all too easy.

The world that swirls and jiggers around me is not the world I had hoped for. It is not the world of unconditional love and respect. It is not the world of altruism and charity. It is not a world that understands true love; “agape” love; love that truly fulfills “Love one another as I have loved you. For no greater love has any man than this, that he would lay down his life for a friend.”

Would I die for my Facebooks friends? Hardly. I don’t really KNOW them anymore than they truly KNOW me! This world has lost the meaning of love and friendship and self sacrifice. Now, self sacrifice means to enroll in Nutrisystem so there will be a painless way to lose weight by withholding those unnecessary calories so we will look better in our mirrors and our selfies.

Standing in darkness, I regard the eastern horizon. It is there my hope lies. For, the darkness will not persist. It will surrender. Inevitably. Inexorably. Reluctantly; to the new dawn. For light has come into this world and man cannot snuff it out. We can think we killed it. But, the light that man has seen and man craves and man cannot live without will always tear the darkness asunder!

A new dawn comes. Women, the most despised of their culture, clad in plain cloth with no makeup and no perfume; with no desire for outer beauty; desiring only to insure that He would be preserved in dignity in His grave; these women who no man would respect were the first to stumble though the dying darkness of dawn upon the empty tomb. It was to women that He first appeared to announce that no matter how hard we try as men and women, we can never destroy the light. We can never kill hope. We can never annihilate love.

He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!