Meg and I enjoy reading books to each and we recently found the children’s book The City of Ember. It is post apocalypse tale, where people live in a city built underground. They have no knowledge of the outside world, but consider themselves to be the one light in a dark world. They also place the “builders” in a status of reverence – a subtle jab at Christianity (or religion).

Now 250 years after their arrival, the city is beginning  run out of supplies (the city produces very little, but slowly consumes can goods, light bulbs, and anything else). Ember is also beginning to break down and this includes the generator which occasionally leaves the city in complete darkness! The builders designed a way out, with a box that would open after 220 years. Of course this box was lost… only to be discovered, with the contents damaged, by two twelve years (who are not in middle school, but already in the work force!).  Of course chaos ensues… but the image of a society, living in darkness, that thinks it is the only light in the world…

Jurgen Habermas, a German philosopher, staked his whole life on the power of reason. But when he attended the funeral of a friend, he realized that his enlightened brilliance had nothing to say to death. And so he found a place for religion. Of course in the face of death, well, our worldview often changes… (see the article here)

I have written this before, but the event of the cross is really spectacular. Take a moment and think, God is dead. That very fact should have set the world tumbling in on itself and it is beyond me how reality survived. Of course the Father was still in heaven… And yet, at the shaking of the foundations, the world barely noticed. Certainly no one outside of Jerusalem knew. Even inside the city the feast continued.

Then on Easter our whole system of existence is rocked. Forever before that point we functioned under the law. At first Adam and Eve functioned perfectly—but after their fall we all functioned sinfully. Still, the Law reigned and death would be our destruction. So it is amazing that when everything changed—no one noticed.** No one knew until a few ladies found the stone rolled away! Death no longer reigned, grace had arrived.

For those living in darkness have seen a great light…

{Earthquakes literally rip the world open.** A nuclear bomb could flatten a city. Yet the biggest transformation the world has ever known – death defeated – went unnoticed (until the ladies stumbled upon the good news). Why is this? … Why does bad overshadow the good? …}

**Another large quake happened today in China (7.1) – that make four majors beginning with Haiti (7.0), then Chili (8.8), then Mexico (7.2)…

Over the next several weeks we are jumping into Acts and the start of the church. It begins with the disciples staring into the sky, when two angels meet them and say, “Why do you stand here looking into the sky…” (Acts 1:11). And so we are called to step into action – to report that the world is no longer doomed. That there is something more than what we see around our lives. The aftermath of Easter is the declaration of the church. Death is more, because Jesus is alive. And the church is called to lead the world into this light!