After the Good Friday sermon meditating on death, it is time to meditate on Resurrection Life and the victory won by Jesus Messiah. Here are two songs rattling around in my head.
The Exsultet is sung on the evening of Holy Saturday, the first celebratory song of the Easter season as mourning is turned to joy. It is the privilege of the deacon to sing this song, and I have happily sung and said it the past three years during the Easter Vigil at Grace Anglican Church in Edgeworth, PA. It is all supposed to be chanted, but I have not made ample time in my schedule to learn it all. So I sing the first part and do the rest as a dramatic reading.
The second song is a cover of All My Tears by Julie Miller. When I first heard the cover by Jars of Clay, I immediately took the song as a personal anthem for my death. However, after my best friend Necia died in December 2023, I heard the song with new perspective and have tried to let it minister healing to my broken heart. I recorded it for friends and family as they prepared to scatter Necia’s ashes back in Wales.
The day Necia died, a rainbow shined over her neighborhood. In an amazing grace from the LORD, a rainbow shined on Good Friday over Tintern Abbey, one of Necia’s favorite places, when the family went to scatter her ashes there. What an amazing caress from the LORD to the grieving. Thank you, Abba.
