On Easter Sunday, congregations around the world will come together to celebrate the resurrection. Families will gather and children will hunt for eggs in celebration of our risen King. The empty grave is certainly worth celebrating but I wonder if in our focus on Easter Sunday, we are too quick to forget about the darkness of Good Friday and the people who are sitting in it this weekend.
I stood in the aisle holding those little shoes and flashed back to the exploited little girl who came home to me four years ago. I tried them on Alyssa then took them off, disappointed that they fit. When my husband returned from his wandering, I showed the shoes him, expecting an equally distraught reaction. I hoped that he would at least think that she was far too young to be prancing through the church in half inch heels. Instead he questioned whether she would fall wearing them. I explained what the shoes represented but they didn’t mean that to him.
As I reflect back over the past two years, I remember many times when I felt like I was Moses, alone on a mountain, growing weary of the fight. There were moments though, when people came beside me and helped me bear the load. In small acts of kindness, friends and strangers came along and held our arms up.