Some weeks carry more weight than others. This has been one of those weeks for me.

The deaths of Alabama teen Will Roberts, mountaineer Nims Purja, and artist Glenn Harsand have left many of us grieving. Three remarkable people. Three beautiful souls. Three lives that still seemed to have so much life left to live. Each leaves behind family and friends, communities they helped shape, and a world made better because they were here.

As I have prayed with these losses, I have found myself returning to one word, one feeling really: resonance.

In music, resonance is what happens when one note awakens another. In creation, it is the mysterious way one life continues to stir life in someone else. Long after a voice has grown quiet, its song can still be heard.

As people of resurrection resonance, when we confess in the Creed that we believe in the communion of saints, we are saying something far richer than, “We remember those who have died.” As people of faith, we are proclaiming that those who belong to Christ are gathered into God’s own life, and that love is never severed by death. We are sing-praying that their witness continues and that their lives continue to bear light into the world.

I think that is why the writer of Hebrews speaks of a “great cloud of witnesses” so openly. Saints have never been distant spectators looking down from heaven. They are faithful companions whose lives still resonate with ours, drawing us ever deeper into the life of God at times when we most and least expect it.

This week also marks another year since my own father’s untimely death. There are still moments when I miss him deeply. But over the years I have also come to recognize the quiet ways his life continues to resonate within mine – in the choices I make, the prayers I pray, the kindness I hope to offer, and the faith I continue to discover. 

Perhaps this too is one of resurrection’s quiet gifts. Will. Nims. Glenn. Pops. And so many others whose names we quietly carry in our hearts. Their stories are not over. Their witness continues. Their love still calls something forth in us in the resonant hum of Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

May we give thanks for those whose lives continue to resonate within our own. And may we, by God’s grace, become that same kind of resonance for someone else, bearing light, hope, and love among the living.