I’m writing this to you from a difficult moment in the past. Creating a book like Disciplines takes time, and I’m writing in the United States in 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, with a difficult election still to come. I have no idea how these crises affected you; but I know this week’s scriptures shed light on them. May what you’ve learned since 2020 also shed light on these reflections.

Revelation begins magnificently with greetings from the One “who is and who was and who is to come” and from “the Alpha and the Omega.” We are immediately in the framework of eternity, where the crises and triumphs, kindnesses and injustices, even the lives and deaths of earth seem insignificant. Yet they are significant, for we are also greeted by “Jesus Christ, . . . the firstborn of the dead, . . . who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood.” The Eternal One took notice of our wrongs and tragedies and sent us a Redeemer to share in them and overcome them, to overcome even death itself.

I don’t know who comes to your mind when you think of resurrection and eternal life. I know there may well be someone special. When we celebrate the feast of Easter with flowers and trumpets and glorious hymns, there may be someone in particular whom you long to think of sharing life with the risen Christ. It may be someone lost to COVID-19, to an act of violence, or just to the hardships and hazards of life on earth. I invite you to hold that someone in your heart and think of Jesus reaching out his wounded yet warm hand to them.