Let me set the scene:
9 am Holy Saturday, I turn on my laptop that is barely 2 years old (and not yet fully paid off)...and instead of those Windows XP tones, I heard nothing. When I looked, it was the blue screen of death...

Now this was not the first blue screen of death I had seen in the last week, but it was the first one that I had seen at bootup. This was not good. When the hard drive started humming last week, I backed up a lot of things...not everything, though. And on Friday night, I didn't print out or back up the Easter sermon, because it still needed some tinkering...Ditto for the Easter Sunday communion liturgy...

1 hour and 15 minutes with Dell on the phone ($40 bucks worth, since the warranty expired in February)...and we find it is a hardware problem only...or so we guess. So I rejoin the Easter sanctuary decorators and we get that taken care of. I then go to BigBox Store with the "Squad"ron of computer gurus...They are able to retrieve my outlook.pst file, so emails and contacts weren't lost...but the rest of the drive is worthless as titties on a boar hog.

With new drive installed, I get back to the church and spend the next 7 hours, rebuilding the hard-drive by installing programs...and rebuilding the sermon and communion liturgy. At 11 pm, I walk home (all of 30 feet). In bed by 12:20...dozing at 1 as the house rocks with knocking at the front door...and then the doorbell...

I throw on a robe, hurry down the stairs and turn on the porch light. Peering through the peephole, I see one of our neighborhood beat cops (we host the local police community group so I've met them). I open the door.

"Pastor. I'm sorry to wake you, but I thought you would want to know...a gentleman from the neighborhood has killed himself in your yard."

After making it clear he wasn't going to give me any more details, he excused himself and returned to his patrol car. I went upstairs, changed clothes, brushed my teeth and came outside. The family was in a car next to my house, the police on the side street next to the church, a sheet covering the body at the foot of one of our trees.

The family, I learned, did not want to talk to me, did not want to come into the church for coffee, and the cops couldn't leave the body. Having exhausted what I could "do" instead I just went into my house...and prayed and waited along with all of them for the coroner to arrive.

The innocuous looking white minivan arrived just after 2. My view was partially obscured, but it was clear there was some difficulty getting him into the black plastic bag we all recognize from CSI...

Two and half hours of sleep later, I rose to proclaim the resurrection, to welcome all to an Easter Breakfast and then to preach on how our rehearsal of the Easter Story is a way of learning what the real truth is...the truth about love conquering death and brokenness...about reconciliation overcoming war and fear...

And here's an odd thing...I'll be honest...I was afraid it would start sounding like platitudes given how I was feeling and what had happened just hours before...but instead...a passion took hold...literally....a passion to claim and proclaim a resounding "YES" in the face of the shadow-filled "NO" of the night before...not just for this poor soul who had lost his hope, but for everyone...

Christ is Risen...
Just in Time.