After a glorious Easter celebration yesterday, we find ourselves on what can be called Easter Monday….the day after the glorious celebrations. For those of us who work in the church, it is often a rest and recuperation day after the many detailed filled days that lead up to Sunday. Others are headed back to work or school and business as usual. The mountain top experience that may have been yesterday's news seems to be over and we move on. 

Thinking about this phenomenon this morning, I was reminded of a quote by Barbara Brown Taylor that I found in an essay I read in the last days of Lent. It caught my attention because of our church's theme of "Coloring Outside the Lines." She writes:“By then, they knew that God colored outside the lines all
the time-as a matter of divine principle-and there was no going back.” Taylor is speaking about the people she has known in her life who understand that being a person of faith is not about belief…..in fact, it goes 'way beyond belief' which is the title of this essay. She is speaking about the people who walk along side the Holy to places they never intended to go, carrying out acts they never expected to do, living lives that continue to surprise and startle them. She says these are the people in the scriptures and those in our daily lives who take seriously a word we don't say very often anymore but is littered throughout the Bible: Behold! 

Behold! The tomb is empty. Behold! The bush is burning. Behold! The daffodils are blooming. Behold! The head is crowning. Behold! The breath is gone. Behold! The stars are too numerous to count. Behold! The river is running. Behold! The tears are falling. Behold! The laughter is contagious. Behold! Behold! Behold!

On this day after Easter, for those of us who call ourselves Christian,our work is clear. We have been challenged once again by the divine principle of coloring outside the lines. If we take seriously the alleluias of yesterday, there is no going back. We are the people meant to walk out our doors every morning ready to Behold! 

If you have already stumbled your way into Easter Monday with a fuzzy brain, a slightly sick stomach from too many jelly beans,a small headache from the trumpets still ringing in your ears, never fear. The good news….at least a part of it…is that this beautiful Creation of which we are a part is filled to overflowing with moments to behold. Our work is to see each one as a stone rolled away moment, a Behold! moment to witness. And then our next step is to tell the next person and the next…one more time.

From the way I read the scriptures, that is what Easter is all about.