New
Hi friends,
This is the first in a series of Easter devotions from WorshipWell, gathered under the title The Terms of Resurrection. You’ll get an email each Monday through Saturday from now until June 4th. Each day’s devotion will include a brief reflection on a single term selected from or inspired by the texts that week. You are welcome to share this devotion with your community.
Easter Monday - New
"God meant things to be much easier than we have made them"
-Dorothy Day
I heard an Easter story about Dorothy Day. As she laid out her Easter outfit one year, it was all old familiar clothes. But each Easter she knew, also needed some newness, no matter how small. She described how she was able to find a few coins–enough to buy new laces for her shoes.
I imagine the undoing of the old laces. They were likely tattered–possibly had been repaired with knots. Maybe she had to cut them out with a pen knife. Perhaps she dragged them out of the holes in one piece and saved the string for some other purpose. In my mind the boots are relaxed when unlaced, their tongues loosened; the leather softened by use. In my mind they are low boots because she was on her feet a great deal, and walked.
Then I see her patiently threading the new laces along their routes. It takes as long as it takes. Done, Dorothy Day’s shoes look different, but also the same. They fit. She tugs them on. Ties them snugly. Smooths the sleeves of her jacket. Rises to the day’s worship and work.
We like the word new at Easter time. New life blooms around us–or if Spring hasn’t quite made an appearance, we simulate it with flowers. We blow trumpets and sing alleluia again. New sounds in worship after the long Lenten fasts. New faces, perhaps. Some of us wore new clothes yesterday. We gave gifts.
This year, Easter’s newness meets a world that can feel very old and seem very worn. Today is the 107th day of the year 2022 and the 54th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We’re more than two years into a pandemic that has killed more than six million people. Easter arrives in the middle of so many things happening, both public and personal. I’m guessing you’re currently aware of and touched by both.
It is early in Easter, my friends. Recall how slow of heart some of the first witnesses were, and how it took them time to realize and recognize the news the women shared. Not everybody’s good at this stuff yet. That’s okay. Start small. It takes as long as it takes.
May the Easter newness be like strong new laces in your old familiar boots. As you rise to the work and worship this day requires, may you do so with grace and dignity, and also joy.
Christ is Risen.
“I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19