Early on Sunday, Mary comes running

It happened very early in the morning.

Gospel stories about the Resurrection emphasise this, and several of our Easter hymns echo that emphasis. So do our traditions of devotion, with their vigils, their candles, their early services and their outdoor sunrise celebrations.

When Jesus was raised from the dead, it was very early in the morning.  The stories, songs and celebrations all evoke the special feel of that time of day.

It is still, quiet. Even familiar things look strange as they begin to emerge from the cloak of darkness and the mist of dawn.  It is fresh. The grass is untrodden, the air unbreathed, the day unused. It is full of unspoken possibilities. It is all yours. No one else is yet about - only the ardent, the urgent and the desperate are abroad at this hour.

It is new. The night may hold sins; griefs; the fear of nameless horrors; the hopeless sense that darkness is permanent.  But the first streak of light in the sky says otherwise.

It heralds a morning like the first morning, as new and as full of promise as the first day that saw human eyes open.  These early morning aspects of the story claim our hearts because they underline its significance.

The Resurrection announces the end of our worst nightmares and of our last enemy. It marks a new beginning in the long story of human life and of human relationship with the God who gave us life.

It makes possible a new turn in the personal story that is my life; your life. It rolls away the heavy stone that seems to close off our highest hopes and our best dreams. It is full of new possibility.  And it reflects the nature of God. The faith we hold is not our manufacture, but his doing.

However early we awake, he is already present. However soon we start, he has already acted. However urgently we express our need, he has already answered.  His grace is, as the old fashioned but precise word has it, prevenient: it comes before anything we do or say. It is there first.

It is like Jesus, already set free in the garden, waiting to be recognised.

Have a joyful Easter.

      Brian Tucker.