Three years ago, as I was doing some gardening in my yard, I found a lot of thatch under the grass. It had been sitting there all winter long. A basic gardening tip is that in order to have a good lawn, that thatch must be weeded out.

This may also be a good message for the time when we move from Lent to Easter, remembering Jesus’s death and resurrection. Some things may die inside of us during Lent, and that opens space for new things to sprout. Paul declared that because of Jesus’s death and resurrection, we “must consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11), and in the Book of Common Prayer, we ask God to raise us “from the death of sin to the life of righteousness” (p. 505). 

I believe a similar message appears in a famous song performed by Argentine artist Mercedes Sosa. The song challenges us to “take everything out, as in the spring, so new things will sprout inside.” I wish I could experience that kind of renewal in my life, not just at Easter, but all the time!

May this Easter be the season when we realize that many old things have died because we have successfully weeded them out, and there is now room for new things to sprout. 

— Hugo Olaiz