Something More
Just before Easter this year, EMA opened a new clinic called Rain Tree Clinic in a remote part of the jungle in Myanmar. Before this facility, the people in the area had a hard day’s walk to get to the nearest medical help of any kind. Foreigners are still not allowed to go to this area. As I look at some pictures from the place, I am struck by how physical it all is.
In the picture, villagers and students are collecting gravel from a river bed and hauling it to the clinic building site to make concrete.
They cut trees and bamboo and carve them into usable building material by hand.
To eat, they fish…they collect fruit from trees…they pick edible plants from the jungle flora.
They work late into the night to prepare for the clinic’s opening ceremony. And after all the celebrations, there is the very physical work of caring for patients. And that’s messy. Patients with diarrhea, pneumonia, asthma…uncertainty, pain, suffering. Yet, in the midst of it all, there is beauty, laughter and community…subtle evidence hinting to something more in life than just the physical.
As I look at these pictures, I start to see Easter in a similar light. If you are open to looking closely, the physical reality around Easter also hints to something more. Sweat, blood, torn flesh. Death. Then, the light of Easter morning falls on an empty tomb. A mysterious gardener knows my name. A walking companion brings Life to scripture and fire to my heart. The “something more” is subtle at first, still half hidden. The hair on my arms stands up…my breath catches with this thought. If Easter is true…a world is coming where the spirit and the physical walk hand and hand, no longer at odds with each other but with transforming wholeness. The wholeness that day had the power to change the witnesses from cowering figures behind locked doors to outspoken lives that even death could not silence. May we all seek and find the “something more” hidden in the ordinary physical world around us and be so transformed!!
