Midway.

As a young girl and teenager, the Western Fair came to our city every fall. (This was western as in southwestern Ontario in Canada). Of course, the animals and agricultural exhibits were wonderful, with stalls of cows and lambs, goats, horses, and chickens. There was entertainment and music on the stage every day of the fair. Booths sold carnival food: candy apples, cotton candy, and corndogs. Tables were piled high with crafts and quilts, flowers, preserves and vegetables, blue ribbons, and honorable mentions. The smells, the colors, the crowds. It was all amazing, but it was the midway that held my imagination and hopes with its rides, games, and thrills in the center of the fairgrounds. A street of flashing lights, games of “skill,” and to my early teenage eyes, shiny spinning machines or mysterious dark doorways into mirrored rooms or haunted houses each promised escape and excitement, surprise and a thrill. Fortunatetly, they all ended in safety with a gasping story to tell. Some had names like the Zipper or the Octopus, while others were standard iconic stalwarts like the Ferris wheel. But they all offered momentary wonder, breathlessness, and new perspective. The agricultural exhibits and 4H entries were lovely and interesting, but it was the Midway where everything changed, even if just for a moment.

We are at the “midway” in our fifty days of Easter. Day 25.

It’s time to pause on our Easter journey and reflect on how Risen Life is unfolding.

Perhaps at this midway, you can stop to reflect on how the resurrection of Christ is radically changing your life and recover some of the breathless wonder and excitement it brings to you and to the cosmos.

Today, midway, spend some time with these questions:

How has the Risen Christ appeared to you in these past 25 days?

How has the practice of the “slow read” of the story changed your faith? Changed you?

How has your heart been opened (perhaps raced with excitement and joy) to see the Risen One in your days, in your life, in our world?

Where do you see the Risen Christ?

At this midway of the Easter journey, how have you been “eastered”? Resurrected?

What questions and what hopes do you carry into the next 25 days?

Midway can be a moment when we experience a fullness of life unknown to our regular living. Be intentional today on this 25^th day to your practice and prayer in the Risen Life.

Practice death-defying believing, living, praying, and loving.

Prayer: God who undoes death, recover in me the excitement, hope and joy of risen life. Renew in me wonder and wanting, that through you, my heart risks believing, and my life risks revealing that love never dies. Alleluia. Amen.

_{Photo: Image by Ken Brakefield from Pixabay}