Risen

Psalm 37:40

The LORD helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.

So on this Easter eve I come to the end of my journey. Forty verses in Psalm 37. I'm not a big fan of analysis; when we break things apart they lose their identity, but for this Psalm I have done just that. I do think that working with individual verses has been tough at times, but now at the end, I feel that I get the message of this Psalm-- the whole Psalm better for having done it. So this verse comes at the end of a Holy Week. Saturday night, almost 36 hours after noon Good Friday. I imagine the disciples, restless and weary, a dead messiah in a tomb, thinking about what the day after Sabbath would bring.

Then I think of all the messages of Psalm 37. Patience, trust, abiding, righteousness. I know that when I wake tomorrow, the tomb is going to be empty, but in my life, I wake many mornings wondering "how I'm going to move the stone." The women walked toward the tomb with that same thought on the first Easter. How could you maintain faith in those circumstances? But they still did not desert their Lord, they were faithful even in His death and just like Psalm 37 promised, they received the reward of Good News. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.