Dark -

Cold blackness, a night that’s felt

Aloneness, like Leviathan’s fate

Hope has died, now faith removed

Opress’d at the spell of ebony weight

A clock ticks, each second pounds

Calm belies the gathering storm

Haunting memories take on flesh

An apparition now a darkened form

The talon’d grip holds fast and firm

Has grace forgot that ancient pledge?

Can one be lost, cast far away?

Is mercy left for foulest dredge?

Lazarus' stench, alive but dead

Eyes drawn tight from Eden's stain

One word uttered, death has stuttered

Can these graveclothes dance again?

Declare your word, a whisper’d voice

A lightning flash from mercy’s arc

A Cross suspended, a world upended

Begone! that devil of the dark

Darkness mine, now His became

Exchanged brightness for deepest night

Imputation and transformation

Death became the brightest light

-Dan Morse, Dark, 2009

A Prescient C.S. Lewis on Resistance to Christ's Claim to Lordship -

'This mutability is the fate of all movements, fashions, intellectual climates and the like. But a Christian movement is also up against something sterner that the mere fickleness of taste. We have not had (at least in junior Oxford) any real bitter opposition. But if we have many more successes, this will certainly appear. The enemy has not yet thought it worthwhile to fling his whole weight against us. But soon he will. This happens in the history of every Christian movement, beginning with the Ministry of Christ Himself. At first it is welcome to all who have no special reason for opposing it: at this stage he who is not against it is for it. What men notice is its difference from those aspects of the World which they already dislike. But later on, as the real meaning of the Christian claim becomes apparent, its demand for total surrender, the sheer chasm between Nature and Supernature, men are increasingly 'offended'. Dislike, terror, and finally hatred succeed: none who will give it what it asks (and it asks all) can endure it: and all who are not with it are against it. ...Long before it became as important as that the real opposition would have begun, and to be on the Christian side would be costing a man (at the least) his career.' 

- C.S. Lewis, The Decline of Religion (God in the Dock)

The Last Enemy -

‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ – 1 Cor. 15:26

In the cold and dark of a primitive and obscure Judean hillside tomb a decisive blow has been dealt to that singular nemesis before whom all men must bow.  On that Sunday morning and at the first rays of dawn death itself has met it's indomitable foil.  In the wee hours death, that proudest of enemies, has died. A new day has dawned, a new life has begun, a new creation has been called to be, a new Adam has arisen to take rightful place. Death, once the merciless and unfaltering conqueror has met it's match. The gears and grind of a grand reversal can be heard over the faint lilt of sparrows regaling the new day with Talitha’s song.  At the op’d rolling of the resurrection stone effusive life spills out into the daylight never more to be held captive by dark’d whimsy. In the distance a serpent grasps and gasps for Life. Simultaneously death has been cast into that gaping sarcophagus while the stone rolls back finally ever-sealed, oathed and stamped with bloodied emblem.  Death, where now is your victory cry? Death the mocker now lies silent. That long-cursed Curser has been forever cursed. Death, the once-reigning king, has become the servant-pauper now in ever-bended bow before the new crowned Prince of Life. Death be damned. On this Sunday morning death itself has met it's death.

Dan J. Morse

Resurrection Sunday, 2015