Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth. He placed it in his own new tomb, which had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance and left. – Matthew 27:59-60

Over the years, ideas and practices and meaningful moments in our family life have become traditions. The way we do Christmas morning, the silly birthday song Naomi made up one year that somehow stuck, serving one-another coffee at the beginning of the day… planting something in the garden on Good Friday.

Rebekah and I have always tried to address the terrible fact of The Cross by consciously planting new life. The hard work, the digging, the sweating, the struggle; the gentle placing in the ground of something that will grow and bloom and flourish. Then watering and nurturing and living into the hope – the promise – of new life.

Often we plant something in memory of some loved one we lost during the year. There are azaleas and river-birch in Pensacola, palm trees and lilies in Brandon, hydrangea and most especially Japanese Maple in Wake Forest still growing strong. They evoke the memory of parents, cousins, siblings, grandparents and friends; so many people we love and miss and celebrate.

This year our Good Friday planting is the beginning stages of the brand new garden here at Maul-Hall Tarboro. To say this house has no garden is a dramatic understatement. There is new grass (fighting hard against the lack of rain) between the street and the sidewalk, but everything else is a blank slate.

So Friday morning we moved all our potted plants from the rental on Saint James, and we dug out the temporary shrub repository we had constructed in the back. Then we started the process of landscaping at Saint Patrick.

The possibilities here are amazing! The opportunity of starting from scratch. The house itself is already a study in resurrection and new life, and now we have the privilege of bringing back the garden too.

We see this as a lot like faith. It is not just about celebrating what God has done for us it is about what we do next.

But for today, reflecting on Good Friday and the long silence of Holy Saturday, we want to remind ourselves of the insistence of life and of the latent promise that is the miracle of regeneration, every time anything is put into the ground.

Thank you, Jesus, for being willing to take such a journey in response to your love for me. “Amazing love!” Charles Wesley wrote, “how can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”