A good quote by Anne Lamott

I've been reading Plan B, by Anne Lamott. It continues the theme of Traveling Mercies -- her journey of faith. Here's something she said about living in difficult times that really resonated with me:

“Like her, I am depressed and furious. I often feel like someone from the Book of Lamentations. The best thing I’ve heard lately is the Christian writer Barbara Johnson’s saying that we’re Easter people, living in a Good Friday world.

I don’t have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I’d like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I’d like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday School, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.

In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves — poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives.”
(p. 140, “Good Friday World” in Plan B by Anne Lamott; New York: Riverhead Books, 2005.)