Easter Reflection from Conference Minister Rev. Dr. Lorraine Ceniceros

Beloved Church, we are almost there.

This weekend we will gather and say the words again.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.

We know these words.
We trust these words.

But if we are honest, the world right now does not feel like it is possible for resurrection. There is too much that feels unsettled. Too much that feels heavy. At times, it feels like things are unraveling faster than they can be mended.

We are carrying grief.
We are carrying anger.
We are carrying a quiet exhaustion that does not always have words.

We often say we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. This year, that does not feel like a distant idea. It feels close. It feels real.

And still, this is where the story begins.

The first Easter did not arrive in a peaceful world. It came in the aftermath of violence and loss to a community that had been shaken. It came to people who did not yet know what hope would look like again. The women went to the tomb not with expectation, but with love. They showed up in the middle of their grief. And there, before anything made sense, God was already at work.

That is the promise we carry.

Not that everything will suddenly feel resolved. Not that the world will become easy. But that even here, even now, life is beginning again. Resurrection does not wait for perfect conditions.

It takes root in places like this. In ordinary faithfulness. In communities that keep showing up for one another. In people who refuse to let go of love. Sometimes it looks like courage. Sometimes it looks like community, and sometimes it looks like refusing to turn away from another

So, as we move toward Easter, you do not have to rush ahead. You do not have to force joy.
You do not have to pretend things are different than they are. Just stay present. Stay open. Stay with one another.

Easter is coming.

Not as an escape from this world, but as a promise within it. And even now, before the alleluias are spoken out loud, quietly and often out of sight, new life is already finding its way among us.

With you on the journey,
Lorraine