I love words beginning with RE. The ones you find on magazine covers that motivate you to change your house, furniture, looks, relationships, or health.
Just reading the words re-energizes me!
Rejuvenate
Repurpose
Renovate
Restore
Refurbish
Renew
Remodel
Rediscover
Reorganize
Revitalize
The dictionary defines the prefix RE as again, anew, backward. But that seems inadequate.
The whole beauty of the word RE is that it points forward.
RE means seeing the past and the future and doing something about it in the present. When I reorganize, I look at a messy old closet and put things in order so that my future is simplified. When artists creatively repurpose a piece of furniture, they take what it was and give it new purpose so the piece has renewed value. When a home is remodeled, the existing structure is not torn down, it is added to, or changed so that the modifications fit the new owner’s life.
RE connects the past to the present to the future.
I love Easter because it’s full of RE:
Rejoice! Resurrection. Rebirth. Relationship.
And it’s also full of again and backward. We celebrate Easter again and again. But unfortunately, we can’t see it anew because we do see it all backwards. We know the end of the story.
But what would it have been like to be in the crowd during Jesus’ day, experiencing great hope and then great loss, never comprehending Jesus would rise again?
Walt Wangerin writes in Reliving the Passion,“It is the experience of genuine grief that prepares for joy. . . . The disciples approached the Resurrection from their bereavement. For them the death was first, and the death was all. Easter, then, was an explosion of Newness, a marvelous splitting of heaven indeed. But for us, who return backward into the past, the Resurrection comes first, and through it we view a death which is, therefore, less consuming, less horrible, even less real. We miss the disciples’ terrible, wonderful preparation.”
Maybe it can’t be an “Explosion of Newness” for us, but we can realize how Easter connects our past with our future. Easter give us the opportunity to be reborn. Easter offers the privilege of remodeling, repurposing, revitalizing, reorganizing, rediscovering, reconnecting.
This Easter experience the RE in Resurrection.
Relive the Passion! Reconnect to God and rejoice in a relationship with the Risen Lord.
About Ann Stewart
Ann just won the Christy Award for Best Debut Novel of 2017 with Stars in the Grass, originated AMG’s Preparing My Heart series, and writes “Ann’s Lovin’ Ewe” for The Country Register. When she's not writing, she's waving her arms directing musicals, teaching middle schoolers, or watching UVA Basketball, This is Us, or Madam Secretary. In her free time she hangs out with her husband, raising two lovely daughters and a whole flock of fuzzy sheep on Skye Moor Farm, in Virginia--where unscripted drama provides plenty of entertaining material.
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