Easter Stories

Last Friday morning I was up early and waiting for the sun to rise. Not only was it Good Friday, it was the first day of spring turkey season 2025. I had been scheduled to work at Simon Pearce that day, but Jenelle's uncle had passed and so I had taken off because the funeral was that day, but a little later in the morning. As I sat and waited for the sun to rise, I heard my first whippoorwill of the year. The morning sky, the whippoorwill, the upcoming funeral, another funeral I had been to on Wednesday, all of those things got my memories rolling.

My mind shifted back to  one year ago. My dad had just passed away just two days before the first day of turkey season. I remembered how with my dad's passing and the viewing coming up later in the day, I wasn't feeling too excited about hunting, but just being out there in nature with God was where I needed to be. Just as the sky was turning pink I heard a gobble, which led to an exciting argument about who should come and who should sit. I won the argument and as I stroked his iridescent feathers, I couldn't help but think about the gift of a passion for turkey hunting my dad had somehow planted inside of me. It would have been nice if I could have thanked him for that.

Turkey's were pretty much non-existent during his hunting years, but with the conservation efforts, the numbers were just starting to increase to a huntable number around the time that he quit hunting. Even if it was mostly around the pond, Dad was into conservation. How to get the ducks to move in or get the fish to grow or even breeding cows that produced more milk. I was tagging along with him one deer season when he saw his first turkey tracks in the snow. I remember how excited he was to see that turkeys were moving into his clear-cut. Several years later he bought a mouth call and a book on turkey hunting and gave it to me, which started my career of turkey hunting. Even though Dad  wasn't a turkey hunter, he always liked my turkey stories, and would chuckle as I told him about my many failed attempts. Trust me, most of the time I failed. But through those failures I became a better turkey hunter.

As those thoughts and memories sifted through my mind, my thoughts turned to heaven and Easter. We would be celebrating Easter without my dad for the first time. Easter had fallen on March 29 last year and we had taken Dad to my brother's for Easter dinner. My nephew had brought a big rack from a buck he had gotten the past fall and even though Dad wasn't doing too well or able to hold a conversation anymore, when he held those deer horns his eyes lit up and he grinned from ear to ear. Our family always made a big tadoo at Easter with a big dinner, an egg rolling contest for everyone and an egg hunt for the kids. If the weather was nice we would have it at Dad's pavilion by the pond.

Caleb and my mom at Easter dinner.

I wondered about heaven. Are they celebrating Easter up there? Are people telling hunting and fishing stories and  eating peanut butter pie and ham? Or are they just hanging out in a big circle singing songs?

Now I have no claim to being theologically scholared and I will admit to being less educated than most, but I like to think that I have a great imagination. And when I think of Jesus giving his all for us, actually dying for us, I'm pretty sure it wasn't something he enjoyed doing. He had human qualities and so I'm pretty sure that he had to push himself to go through with dying on the cross. When you go through a hard time, your greatest desire is for things to just get back to normal and to be the way they are supposed to be, just hanging out with friends and doing what you love, and seeing your friends having fun and hearing about what's going on in their lives. At least for me, that would mean so much more than a birthday cake with my name on it. And so when Jesus came out of the tomb on that first Easter morning, I think he showed himself to his friends, proving that life goes on, and then he went and did what he said he was going to do. He went and prepared a place for us. It wasn't just about him and it wasn't just about me, but about all of us.

I'm pretty sure there's a party going on up there. A good ole Easter dinner with food and fun and stories and laughter. 

As those thoughts rolled around in my mind a turkey gobbled. I was hunting with a flintlock muzzleloader that my father-in-law had built for me. 

A beautiful gun! A beautiful morning! The turkey gobbled. I yelped. We argued about who was going where. He needed to get closer. Even guns have a love language, and “ole betsy” likes being close. I “purred” on my slate call. He gave in. 

I'm telling you that it was a great morning! Maybe I can give more details another time. It will be another neat story to tell my dad one day.

Saturday evening a nasty storm blew through. It knocked down a bunch of trees at the pavilion and sheared off a couple of telephone poles along the road. Dad would have been tickled to death to know that his favorite pair of Canada geese had survived the storm and were still nesting on the floating island he had built. Luckily we were able to get things cleaned up enough to have Easter dinner at the pavilion.

For some of the folks in Springs, PA, I'm guessing that this storm will be one of the worst things that they will have to go through in this life. It will probably take a long time, but I'm certain that everyone is just wishing for things to get back to normal. And it probably will for most. But probably not for a long time. After all, what is normal?

Thinking about Dad and Easter in heaven, storms and trouble here on earth, heaven seems more appealing all of the time. I imagine that once you are there, each year only gets better as more and more loved ones come home. 

I'm not planning on making or taking that trek anytime soon, at the same time, when I do get there, I can't wait to tell Dad about the hunt, the turkey, the pond. But for now there are stories to make and a life to live. Things that we each need to do and journeys that we need to walk. Some are easier than others and some are almost too hard. But none are as hard as what Jesus did for us, living for the truth and then dying for it, to make a path to an eternal good life after this one. And if we choose to let him, he can use our events, our stories, no matter how good or bad, to help someone else find that path.

Telling Dad about the turkey and the flintlock, the storm, the geese, all of that can wait. I have more stories to make and a life to live, and maybe something to write that can make a difference for someone else somewhere along the way.

And so do you!

Your life makes a difference. Live it well!