Friday of the Third Week of Easter

Today’s Life-Line is:

Easter? We focus more on dying than on death. How we deal with dying is more important to us than how we conquer death. […] Learning to deal with dying, however, does not yet mean we have learned to deal with death. Overcoming dying occurs within the realm of human possibilities, while overcoming death means resurrection. It is not from the ars moriendi, but from the resurrection of Christ that a new, purifying breeze can blow into the present world. […] If even a few people were really to believe this, allowing this belief to move them in their earthly actions, much would change. To live from the perspective of resurrection: That is Easter.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

♦ Easter in the Time of COVID-19. It should be noted that Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, theologian, and Nazi-resister, wrote this in a letter to his closest friend from the Tegel prison in March of 1944. Context is everything, especially when writing about Easter and resurrection. Just shy of a year later, he would be hung to death by the Nazi’s. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., another pastor, theologian, and resister of injustice and madness, Bonhoeffer was 39 years old when he experienced first hand what he called “the cost of discipleship,” the title of his book now considered a modern classic.

• What is DB getting at when he makes the distinction between dealing with dying as opposed to dealing with death?

• What might it mean for us during this pandemic to live from the perspective of Easter