The Sun of Righteousness Arose

“Ay, but when we go down, down, down, is it not a blessed thing that Jesus Christ of the seed of David died, and was raised from the dead? If I sink right down among the dead men yet will I hold to this blessed hope, that as Jesus rose again from the dead, so also shall my joy, my usefulness, my hope, my spirit rise.” -Charles Spurgeon

I walk down to the dock just after 6 a.m. on Easter to find a thin blanket of fog shrouding the lake.

All is calm. No wind. No waves. The water is a glassy mirror, a perfect reflection of the sky above.

The only movements are the ripples the ducks make gliding across the water.

A red-winged blackbird perches atop a new birdhouse built for the wood ducks. He stands tall and attentively, singing his happy, trilling song. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing in praise right along with him.

But in the stillness, in the waiting for a glimpse of glory, I catch a whiff of something downright rotten. Floating among the cattails are dozens of dead carp — fish that didn’t survive being down, down, down below the thick ice of this deeply frozen lake.

Up they have come now with the thaw, and this stench of death is foul. Charles Wesley’s words keep coming to mind.

“His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me.”

I was once dead in my sins and stinking something awful, worse even than the rotten stench of these dead fish.

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” Ephesians 2:4

Oh, the triumphs of His grace this Easter morning!

The light fog starts to lift a bit. And the sun rises, and all I can think of is the glory of how the Son rises, too. The Son rises, too. The Light of the World.

I see all the glory of it above me and the perfect reflection of that glory here below.