Yesterday was Easter.

Something changed.

Nothing changed.

Everything changed.

Such is life between the times.

The "Shorter Christian Prayer" has it right. The readings for Easter are repeated every day up through the following Sunday, the entire octave of Easter as it is called. Easter isn't over in a day, even when Monday following seems as dark as Friday before. We need to keep re-hearing the good news. It needs to penetrate our thick skulls and warm our cold hearts and give light to our dark eyes.

Nothing changed but everything changed because something changed.

Jesus was dead. They pulled his body from the cross, hurriedly wrapped it in a shroud with a modicum of spices, and laid it in a borrowed tomb. It all had to be finished before sundown and the start of Sabbath. And God rested on the seventh day and all the earth lay waiting.

Then it happened. Something changed. The morning of the first day of the week, our Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead. Which is an absolutely crazy idea. We all know resurrections don't happen. The processes of death and decay are irreversible. Jesus' disciples knew it as well as we. That's why they didn't believe the women who came running back from the tomb with their crazy story about angels and earthquakes and an empty tomb and meet me in Galilee. Jesus was nailed to a wooden cross until dead then run through with a spear for good measure; he's dead already. Dead men don't rise.

Except this time. God raised Jesus from the dead. Our problem is that we forget about God. We leave God out of the picture. But with God in the picture, this world is not the tidy closed system we so confidently affirm. True, dead men don't rise. But God can raise the dead.

Jesus rose from the dead. Christ is alive. Something changed. The Apostle Paul put it this way, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"

Letchworth State Park, Friday, May 17.

Yashica-D TLR
Kodak TMax 100 120 roll film
Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner