Cliff Loesch Resurrection Sunday March 23, 2008 A Box of New Life      There is a tall grove of trees that was planted by my grandfather down in the South Pasture where I grew up.  There is a series of ponds beside the trees that are fed by springs-so there is water year-round.  And the trees have thrived in that beautiful and peaceful spot.  Just to the north about thirty yards or so is another grove of trees that my father planted over forty years ago.  In contrast to the uniformity of my grandfather's grove that has trees of all the same variety planted in perfect rows, my dad's grove has many varieties of trees in it-including deciduous trees as well as a few evergreens.  Not all of them made it, so there are gaps here and there.  But today, my dad's grove is a mature and beautiful grove of trees as well.      On Monday, LaVonna and I drove to Liberal where my dad was getting a chemotherapy treatment.  That afternoon we drove home with my parents to their place in Texas.  There was a message on the answering machine letting my dad know that his trees had arrived.  He had forgotten that he had ordered them.  But fifty pecan trees that he had ordered through the Texas Forestry Service had arrived.  On Tuesday, LaVonna and my mother drove across the county to retrieve them, and that afternoon, my dad and I went to the South Pasture to start planting them.  The trees were very small-only about two feet tall.  And we started planting them into the moist soil right next to one of the ponds.  Dad didn't last very long.  We were out doing a little work Tuesday morning that had to be done, and actually, after the chemotherapy treatments in Liberal, my dad wears a belt-pack that continues to pump in the chemotherapy drugs for almost two more days.  So we were out moving a calf chute and then planting trees in the midst of treatment.  No wonder he got tired.      Frankly, the trees seemed a little inconvenient.  But what can you do?  I don't suppose you could send them back.  And if we didn't plant them, they would have died soon.  Planting seemed to be the only real choice.  But I have to say that it was interesting that right in the middle of a struggle for life that a box full of new life showed up in the mail.  And that seems to be the way things work-that in the midst of actual life, new life arrives.       Our actual lives may be full of distress and despair and death of many kinds.  Actual life is sometimes disorderly and chaotic.  Actual life may seem monotonous or even full of struggle.  Yet in the midst of our struggle for life-new life often arrives unexpectedly.      In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked his disciples to "watch and pray" so that they would not fall into temptation.  But he might have also been telling them to watch and pray for new life.  Certainly they were not prepared for the resurrection.  I don't think they considered it as a remote possibility-even though Jesus told them what to expect.  At least the women were there that morning.  But even they were caught by surprise.  New life was not what they were expecting to find.      Whatever seems dead and buried in your life, whatever seems impossible, whatever seems hopeless-don't forget that God may send new life your way…unexpectedly, surprisingly.  And even within you-and within me-there can be a resurrection of hope, a resurrection of purpose, a resurrection of love, of will power, of compassion, of direction in life, of a positive attitude, or a resurrection of joy.      The salvation that Jesus Christ offers is a salvation that reaches into every area of our lives.  In Philippians 3, Paul says that he wants to "gain Christ and be found in him" having a righteousness that "comes from God and is by faith."  And he goes on to say, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."  Likewise, may each of us know Christ and the power of his resurrection in our lives.