Azaleas & Alleluias: Learning to Live the New Again

There are certain weeks that carry a kind of layered meaning. This is one of them.

It is the first week of Easter — the beginning of fifty days where, in our tradition, we are invited not just to remember resurrection, but to practice it. Fifty days to live as if new life is not just a distant promise, but a present reality. Fifty days to notice where hope is rising, where grace is breaking through, where love is quietly making all things new.

At the same time, just down the road in Augusta National Golf Club another kind of liturgy is unfolding: The Masters. 

If you’ve ever been, or even watched from afar, you know — there is something almost sacred about the rhythm of it all. The green jacket. The azaleas in full bloom. The hush before a putt. The roar that rolls like thunder through the pines. Even the concession stand feels like a quiet rebellion against the rest of the world — simple, generous, familiar.

It is tradition, held with reverence. And yet… every year is new. 

New players.

New stories.

New moments that no one could have predicted.

A young golfer finding his stride.

A veteran making one more run.

A single swing changing everything.

It strikes me that Easter faith lives in that same space. Resurrection is not about choosing between what is familiar and what is possible. It is about holding them together. 

The story is the same, and yet, the invitation is always new. It asks: 

Where is resurrection showing up this year in your life?

What part of you is being invited to begin again?

What old story is ready to be told in a new way?

Christians are people of tradition — rooted in story, shaped by practice, grounded in something that does not seem to change. And… we are people of resurrection — open to Spirit, attentive to possibility, willing to believe that God is still at work in ways we cannot yet see.

Maybe the next fifty days is simply an invitation to live into that “and.” To listen for the quiet roar of grace in your own life. To notice what is blooming. To trust that even now, something new is unfolding.

Fifty days… not to rush through, but to walk with intention. Fifty days to practice resurrection.

And, perhaps, fifty days… like those gathered under the Georgia pines, to receive it all with a kind of holy curiosity and a deep, abiding sense of wonder at what God can do, because of what God has done. 

Alleluia Christ is risen, my friends.

Let it be in your lives.

Let it be in your work.

Let it be in your grief.

Let it be in your play. 

LET IT BE, Amen.