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“Easter Contemplations

It does not concern me
If this life is all I have.
I do not need a resurrection
Or reincarnation
Or to live with the gods.

It is enough to live
With you here
In the days of your presence.

When my breathes
Are complete,
Lay me by your side
In the dust.
As in life, so in death.
Let us become one
With each other again.”
― Eric Overby, Journey

“Thus on Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and to live by it. It is a gift which radically alters our attitude toward everything in this world, including death. It makes it possible for us joyfully to affirm: "Death is no more!" Oh, death is still there, to be sure and we still face it and someday it will come and take us. But it is our whole faith that by His own death Christ changed the very nature of death, made it a passage—a "passover," a "Pascha"—into the Kingdom of God, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into the ultimate victory. "Trampling down death by death," He made us partakes of His Resurrection. This is why at the end of the Paschal Matins we say: "Christ is risen and life reigneth! Christ is risen and not one dead remains in the grave!”
― Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha

“Maybe every now and then I need something ‘unbelievableâ€� to happen to help make that which is ‘believableâ€� a place where I start, but not a place where I stop.”
― Craig D Lounsbrough

“Easter recognizes that I am living in a prison of my own making, and that God is in the demolition business.”
― Craig D Lounsbrough

“Christ to the thief: Come with me. We die together, a thief and the Maker of the world. Walk with the Infinite made flesh into the belly of the whale. Stand close while reality quakes. Watch while Death is taken by the throat. Today you will be with me in Paradise.
Stories don't end at death.”
― N.D. Wilson, Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World

“...the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it. ... It is through her liturgical life that the Church reveals to us something of that which "the ear has not heard, the eye has not seen, and what has not yet entered the heart of man, but which God has prepared for those who love Him." And in the center of that liturgical life, as its heart and climax, as the sun whose rays penetrate everywhere, stands Pascha.”
― Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha

“Jesus was born in a borrowed barn, he was buried in a borrowed tomb, and in-between it all he borrowed mankind’s sin with the intent of never returning it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If I’m only looking at an ending, I’ll assume that an ending is all that there is. And without a doubt, that kind of assumption is the beginning of the end.”
― Craig D Lounsbrough

“If death is inevitable, who’s to say that there aren’t other things that are inevitable as well? A cross and an empty tomb say ‘yesâ€� and ‘yesâ€�.”
― Craig D Lounsbrough

“The greatest joy is not finding something that we’ve been looking for. The greatest joy is when we’d given up on ever finding it and then it found us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I don’t have it within me to do what God does for me. That’s why he’s God and I’m not.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I don’t need to paint a picture of what I want my life to look like. What I need to do is to study the picture that God painted of me so that I can better understand how to live out the splendor of the painting.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“We can walk to ‘nowhereâ€� and think that ‘nowhereâ€� is ‘somewhere.â€� For such are the roads paved by men. Yet, the humility of a manger and the magnificence of a cross constructed a road to the ‘everywhereâ€� that forever abolished the ‘nowhereâ€� of men.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Why don't they make chocolate horses for Easter with a belly full of gummy bears. Educational and sweet!”
― Neil Leckman

“The unbelievable is nothing more than my lack of faith in action. Easter is nothing less than God building my faith by putting the unbelievable into action.”
― Craig D Lounsbrough

“Men expect a return on what they give, while God returns any such expectations on what He gives.”
― Craig D Lounsbrough

“Every ending will meet its own end, for every ending is destined to be swallowed up by a beginning.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“We’ll hop home, as we hares have done since time immemorial.”
― Leen Lefebre, Ebba, the first Easter Hare (SPRING)

“I incessantly wallow in the ‘muck and mireâ€� of the terrible messes that I have made. And when I realize that God has long ago removed all the ‘muck and mire,â€� I suddenly understand that the only wallowing that’s going on is in my head.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“God declared that the end of ourselves need not be the end of ourselves. And if we don’t somehow find that exhilarating, we will end ourselves.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It’s not that God can’t rescue us. It’s that we choose not to be rescued because we’re too blind to see the necessity of it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“We simply forget all this—so busy are we, so immersed in our daily preoccupations—and because we forget, we fail. And through this forgetfulness, failure, and sin, our life becomes "old" again—petty, dark and ultimately meaningless—a meaningless journey toward a meaningless end. We manage to forget even death and then, all of a sudden, in the midst of our "enjoying life" it comes to us: horrible, inescapable, senseless.”
― Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha

“It would behoove us to remember that the life we live involves the death of something so that it can become the birth of something.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Despite how dark it might be, what is tonight but the precursor to tomorrow?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“His small but showy comb seemed to grow in courage with each move he took.”
― Leen Lefebre, Ebba, the first Easter Hare (SPRING)

“No one on this earth simply succeeded in stopping feelings from running wild, and surely not because his or her thoughts wanted it badly.”
― Leen Lefebre, Ebba, the first Easter Hare (SPRING)

“His tiny toes wiggled as they were ready to go.”
― Leen Lefebre, Ebba, the first Easter Hare (SPRING)

“Hii ni muhimu sana kwa Pasaka. Si tu kwamba Pasaka ni tamasha linalojitegemea, lakini kadhalika linatumika kama siku ya maandalizi kwa ajili ya siku takatifu, siku ya kwanza ya Sikukuu ya Mkate Usiotiwa Chachu. Kwa mujibu wa hesabu za kalenda ya Kihebrania, Pasaka inaweza kuangukia siku ya Jumatatu, Jumatano, Ijumaa au Sabato.”
― Enock Maregesi

“The greatest gifts of all create space for the greatest sacrifices imaginable. For if we simply receive something that does not press us to give something in return, we will die fat with possessions but starved of meaning.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Far too often I have assumed something as impossible because I’ve held my limitations up against the magnitude of the challenge. But when I choose to hold God up against the magnitude of the challenge, then what becomes impossible is my ability to see it as impossible.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough