Easter on a Hill

This past weekend was the weekend of all weekends in the Christian community. It comes every year, somewhere around the end of March or the beginning of April, yet this year it was very different for me.

This was the first Easter I have ever been away from family. I didn't wake up and hear Mom making an egg bake for church brunch while she listened to Haitian hymns on tape (yes, cassette). I didn't put on a new dress, or roll my eyes with my little brother when Mom wanted to take pictures of us dressed up. I didn't sing many of the hymns I normally sing, or go home and eat all the griot and fried plantain I usually eat on the most celebratory Sunday of the year.

This Easter I was in Ithaca, New York—the most lucrative town in New York, obviously—at school, like so many other students. Yet, I think this was the most wonderful Easter I have ever witnessed.

Holy Week is a 7 day period that the Cornell Christian Fellowships anticipate even before final exams first semester. There are outreach events to be planned, concerts to be organized, quartercards to design, and so much more. And amid our numerous prelims and copious homework, God does amazing things, and I am so humbled by the way He is glorified on this broken hill.

Palm Sunday we were hanging posters for our praise and outreach concert, WORTHY, Maundy Thursday we had rehearsal, and Good Friday morning we were handing out quartercards for Easter on the Quad. That night we reminisced on why the Resurrection is our sure and ultimate foundation—without it our faith is futile and our lives pitiful (I Corinthians 15:12-19). At 11 p.m. I huddled in the prayer tent on the Arts Quad with my friend ZachLee, pulling out my gloves for the first time since before spring break. We prayed for the persecuted church and the many people who would hear the Gospel that weekend, all the while hearing the prayers for our campus from the girls next to us. Throughout the wee hours of the night, students took shifts in the tent, and we praised God for all those who stopped as they walked by and asked what we were doing.

Saturday night people of all tribes and tongues and nations, from age nine months (we had a real baby Jesus) to age eighty, gathered to tell the story of the Gospel—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—in the largest lecture hall at Cornell University. As I played my clarinet, I laughed inwardly. I realized that the people around me were some of the smartest in the world, and something outside them compelled them to spend Saturday singing about a cross two thousand years ago. "We were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees?" (Romans 8: 24).

My friend Adrienne said to me after the concert, "You know how we are always like, 'Oh, I hope we aren't just singing all the time in Heaven?' Now I think, I HOPE that's what we are going to do all the time!" I agreed with her. Eternity didn't seem long enough. Later a group of us laughed, sang throwback songs from middle school, and told weird summer camp stories over Purity ice cream, revelling in the joy of fellowship.

Easter Sunday some of my friends and I were going to go to the lake for a sunrise service, but ended up going to Chesterton House instead, a male Christian-living dorm on the far side of campus. Seven of us—four guys and three girls—sang hymns, read Scripture, and shared what Easter meant to us as the sun rose over Cayuga Lake.

Easter on the Quad was inside due to impending rain, yet even then, God knew: it ended up being a beautiful day, and that night I was back on the Chesterton porch eating ham and quiche with my family in Christ.

These people—these students. They love animals and meteorology. Some of them want to run hotels, or do cancer research. A lot of them want to be doctors, or elected officials. Maybe screen write, or curate art. Others, like me, want to teach future college students. These are some of the smartest students in the world, yet God, not their alma mater, is their hope of glory.

Sometimes I'm walking to French class and I cry as I hear "How Great Thou Art" playing off of the bell tower, letting all of Ithaca know who is the original GOAT, and I think, God puts His children in the darkest of places so that they might shine brighter and He might receive the glory. This is why we celebrate Easter every day, not just that Sunday at the end of March or beginning of April.

Life update: still have prelims and research papers, but today He is risen.

Rafiki: He's alive? He's alive!

- The Lion King (The real one. Like the 1994 animated one that one Oscars because it was amazing and beautiful, not the cash-grab remake.)

But the angel answered and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay."...And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, "Rejoice!"

- Matthew 28:5-6, 9a

#Easter #Cornell #Church #Life