Do You See?

I wrote this devotional the first Easter after my father's death and shared it with the Chaplain's Department at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.  

It was Sunday.  My mother and I were driving home after church discussing all of the usual after-service matters.  We caught ourselves voicing several criticisms of the worship service we’d just attended.  I quickly realized that behind our criticism was the pain that worship holds for both of us in the wake of my father's death.  Church and family overlap a great deal in my memories and feelings. Daddy was so much a part of what church life is to me that I swear I can still hear his voice in the choir. As the car turned into the driveway of our home, mother and I were met by a deluge of color from the blooming azaleas in front of the house. Though I recognized their beauty with a passing glance, mother specifically called my attention to them asking, "Son, do you see the azaleas that Orin and I planted?"  As I heard the awed tone of her voice and looked more intently at the blossoming plants, I was not so sure that I really had seen them. When I looked at the flower boxes more closely, I saw that in place of the numerous flowers which usually formed their border, these azaleas were flanked only by weeds.  The meticulous pruning and careful cultivation daddy gave those plants was missing as their shape was rather spindly and the dirt around them was hard and full of clods.

Seeing this state of disrepair brought me pain because I realized that the hands which had cared for these plants only a year ago were gone.      But while I was still in the grip of the pain of loss I looked again and saw the beautiful blooms that had blossomed, seemingly in spite of everything. The purple, pink and white were so full of life. I experienced a profound joy knowing that even in death my father's work continues to bring joy and beauty into my world. That strange mixture of pain and joy was my experience as I took the time to really look at the blossoming azaleas.

The Easter season is upon us and everywhere we look we see the cross of Christ, but I wonder if we really see it?  If we can look closely enough to see the rough wood and the nails, we come face to face with the pain that self-giving love requires, the hurt that shook the very heart of God as His own Son laid down his life because of the hard-heartedness and hard-headedness of humanity. Seeing how far perfect love has to go to reach mankind silences our every claim to self-sufficiency. It is only with eyes stained by the tears of that loss that we can rightly see the resurrected Christ and experience the joy of the redemption which burst forth from the tomb like living blossoms from azaleas stained by neglect.

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown.

                           Isaac Watts

It is that paradoxical mixture of agonizing pain and profound joy which is the Easter experience and the Easter message. Amen.

Ronald D. Vaughan

April 6, 1982