Unexplained: The headline reads: ‘Post boxes get crochet hats in new craze’. Lowestoft is being ‘hit by random acts of crochet kindness…mysteriously popping up all around the town’.
We can’t explain adequately many random events – good ones of love, friendship or family, or sad ones of sickness, disappointment or bereavement.
In the Easter narrative, Jesus’ followers had witnessed the events of the previous week that culminated in their leader’s public execution. On the Saturday so much would have had no apparent explanation.
Unanswered: Yesterday I read an article entitled: ‘The emotional cost of lockdown’ . The profound effect of lockdown on our emotional wellbeing and mental health raises many as-yet unanswered questions.
As a child I was asked ‘Why does a brown cow that eats green grass give white milk. I continue to muse on life’s many unanswered questions…
And struggling for answers… Mary, Jesus’ mother, grieves, having watched her son die a painful death, Peter deeply regrets his cowardice… and Judas commits suicide.
Uneventful: I smile sometimes when I walk past an nearby house with a plaque outside it stating: ‘On this site Sept 5 1782 Nothing Happened’.
For some, nothing has happened during lockdown; social life, work, activity… has been on hold.
Between Friday’s hot cross buns and Sunday’s chocolate eggs comes uneventful Saturday.
Between the farewell meal and arrest of Thursday, the trial, crucifixion and burial of Friday and the empty tomb and resurrection appearances of Sunday there is the apparently uneventful Saturday.
Unexpected: One unexpected conclusion I like is that if you eat too much Easter chocolate it makes your clothes shrink…
The events of the past year have included some unexpected heroes – Sir Tom Moore, Marcus Rashford, quiet yet compassionate hospital staff that have received unexpected but deserved public recognition.
And the whole Easter story reminds us that from the saddest times of despair can come unexpected joyful conclusions of life and hope.
malcolmsmusings.org 