Resurrection Day from the Glory Side

I need resurrection hope today.  I hate conflict.  I hate cancer, broken sump pumps, water flooding Rachel’s basement.  I love friends who drop what they’re doing and come to meet me at the hardware store to show me the right sump pump to buy, and then go and install it in Rachel’s basement on Easter morning!  

Yes, Daddy, my babies are your babies – you take care of them in miraculous ways.  Even the one in heaven with you – seeing Resurrection Day from the glory side.  Like on the other side of the waterfall in The Shack movie.  

But it’s still so dark here. 

God, don’t you see the blackness all around me?  The brokenness of lives cut short without warning.  Cancer ravishing bodies as loved ones anxiously look on.  Marriages broken, promises un-kept, hopes and dreams fallen to the ground.

But Melody is seeing Resurrection Day today from the glory side.

God, let me see!  What does it look like?

I see the completed puzzle, all the pieces, good and bad, fitting together to make the most glorious picture.  Better than I could even imagine or hope for.

I see Diane sitting on Daddy’s lap, so close to his heart.  All her tears are wiped away and she’s so happy, so full of joy as she watches over and prays for her grandchildren and husband.

I see Melody running with Jesus in fields of flowers – she looks just like William running with his friends .  She seems so happy, loved, all her questions answered, trusting Father God to father the boys and her husband.

There’s Mommy, a bride, still enraptured with Jesus after being in his presence over 20 years.

I’ll be there, too, one day. Seeing Resurrection Day, every day, from the glory side.

Resting in the artist who joins each puzzling piece of life together. Fitting each rough edge perfectly in place.  Pieces I never would have dreamed would fit together.

But today, I’m here, and it’s Resurrection Day from the world’s side. And he’s asking me again,

“Will you trust me with your puzzle?”

But Daddy, these pieces are awful! Misery all around me!  People sick and dying! Bad habits and addictions crushing the ones I love.  How, how can these pieces fit together?!?

“Will you trust me with your puzzle?”

You won’t lose any of the pieces?

“No.  Each one is precious to me.”

Then here!  I thrust them to you, puzzle pieces with sharp corners, rolling curves, straight edges.  I give them all to you, pieces of cardboard falling through my fingers.

But you retrieve each piece and as you touch it, I see the gold begin to shine.

Without hesitation you put together my puzzle.  Not laboring over matching colors, or finding corners first. You know where each piece goes.

And you hold Melody’s piece with gentleness that makes me weep, and you weep, too, for you know.  You know.  That’s all – you know.  And you place her in the picture that now radiates your light.

I am the resurrection and the life.  He that believes in me, tho he die, yet shall he live.

And the life I now live in the natural, I live by the grace of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.