How the Blood Red Thread of Easter Hope Can Change You

Reading Time: 3 minutes

After we buried my dad, my world was as dark as death. Every time we visited the cemetery, I would throw myself on his grave and sob until I thought my lungs and heart would burst. And I kept crying in hopes they would burst. My deepest desire at that moment was to join him under the ground, to join him in death. In my mind that was the only way the pain of his loss running through me like dull electricity was going to stop.

I can relate then to how despondent Mary Magdalene felt as she dutifully visited Jesus’ tomb on that sacred Sunday two thousand years ago. Death is final, powerful, and desperately ugly. There is no metaphor of the circle of life, of seeds bursting through dead soil in spring, of a legacy being left for us to carry on that can parry death’s knock out punch. These things can assuage our fear or grief. But they cannot redeem it, turn it into hope and healing. 

I still miss my father. I still grieve other losses in my life. But I know death is not the end. Only one thing defeated death’s power. The promise of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is a red thread of hope from Genesis through Abraham, Ruth, David, Esther, Anna, the woman who touched him, Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, and to me and you. And that truth changed my life forever. 

I hope Mary Magdalene’s poem below communicates that truth.  

Mary Magdalene: Resurrection

For Holy Week this year I wrote a Trilogy of poems, The Woman Who Touched Him: Life, Mary’s Loss: Death, and Mary Magdalene: Resurrection to show how that thread ran through and touched and transformed three remarkable but also ordinary women.

Please let me know how the scarlet thread of redemption has run though your life!

• 

Gaped the cave 

Before me

Lifeless tomb

Of

Trusted friend.

Dawn stood still

Dead with chill

Darker than scarlet sky.

Seven times

Possessed was I. 

Named devil’s child.

I carried evil inside.

My demons

Each answered 

Varied name,

“Torment,” “Reproach,”

“Abyss” and “Shame”

“Dog,” “No-worth,” 

And “Magdalene,” 

Convinced death 

My only escape

I lay in dirt

To Wait.

Instead

Life truer than

Fresh day’s sun

Burst from the heart 

Of One

Called by

God, “Deliverer!”

In his presence

My devils fled.

“Child of my Father,

Of Light and Life,”

Of me, he said.

Together then

Forgiven, healed

 We traipsed with him

Across wild desert field.

Truth poured

From his heart

Like rain from

God’s very vault.

Now his lifeless

Body moulders.

His death!

My fault.

We died too.

We prayed and hid

And gnashed our teeth.

Silent was God

For what seemed eternity.

Today,

Jonah’s Day,

Rather would these spices adorn

A meal

Than his thorn 

Crowned head.

Rather would I have hung

On that lifeless tree

Instead.

Bent over with

Weight of grief

I peer tomb-ward

Fearful as if

A thief.

“Mary!” I heard

Sweet, soft, strong.

As if the

Morning stars

Burst out in song.

Glanced behind

Stood a man

A gardener, 

Except his eyes.

Held no guile or surprise.

Rather wells of life

Unquenchable.

“Teacher,” I cried

Reached and tried

To hold him

Never to let go.

“Do not, yet,” he said.

“Tell them so!”

Over earth he waved

Pierced hand

Like wand bringing birth,

Drawing hope from 

the thread of a 

New day’s 

Blood

Red dawn.

From Luke 8:1-3 & John 20:11-18

Read by The Redheaded-Wildflower, a.k.a. Dee Dee Scott my wife and best friend and a gifted adventurer, teacher, chef, reader, and athlete.