Sunday is Coming

There's a very specific spot at camp that now has special meaning for me. On the Sunday morning of the fall high school retreat (which is the last time I was here), my phone started vibrating and when I looked down, Phil was calling me. Phil isn't much of a caller... And he knows that I generally work every Sunday morning and so I decided I should answer (it was during energizes, not worship so it was okay). 

I walked outside of the chapel, leaned against the right column so that I would be somewhat hidden and answered the phone. Phil was calling to tell me he would be coming home for Thanksgiving in two weeks when both of us had originally told the other we weren't. I was elated and jumped up and down screaming that I would come home too now. 

I lovingly reminded him that it was a Sunday morning and thankfully I was at camp instead of church, but I really couldn't talk much longer. I thanked him for calling to tell me, told him how incredibly excited I was to see him, and that I loved him tons and tons. We hung up and I walked back inside with a bounce in my step and told everyone who asked if everything was okay (not because it's unusual for me to be bouncy, but because they saw I had been on the phone and now had very small tears in my eyes) that everything was perfect because my baby cousin would be home for Thanksgiving and that this is the first time we would see each other since he came back from being deployed.

Tonight I walked past that same brick column outside of the chapel and I waited and waited for my phone to vibrate again. And as I realized that my phone was not going to ring, I thought, "Well... Maybe later it will... Sunday's coming... There is still time..."

Sunday is coming indeed. We are now in the season of Lent. Soon we will journey to the cross and it will be Good Friday. We will find ourselves caught up in the grief we feel that day - the grief that comes when death seems victorius. We will be caught up in the feelings of hopelessness and despair, wallowing for the phone to ring or the cross to be empty. But after Friday, we know that Sunday is coming... And on Sunday death is not victorious. On Sunday, love dissolves the stain of death. On Sunday, love gives the final word. On Sunday, we know that the phone hasn't rung for the last time. 

The Sunday of this retreat will be quite different than the Sunday at the fall retreat, but we can't give up yet... Because we know about the power of Sunday's. We know that we will hear the voice of love again and again and again.