belated Lent/Easter thoughts

I know Easter was a couple of weeks ago, but I want to write about something that resonated with me during Lent. We had one Sunday School hour dedicated to thinking about the day between Good Friday and Easter, when everyone was grieving the death of Jesus. We were asked to relate the stories from Scripture of the hours following Jesus' death and then his burial and the grieving to our own lives. Something that came up in that conversation was that sometimes that Saturday can drag on and on in our own lives. When we have lost something or someone, when our world has been rocked by a traumatic event or have gone through depression or hard times, that can be compared to that day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when Jesus rose again. Even though those times are very difficult, there is hope for new life. It may not happen that quickly, but we can have hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I know that's true for me. I have had some very hard times in the past 2 years, but I am doing very well now. Not that my life is perfect and that I feel everything is settled and resolved, but I am happy and hopeful. But I have to say that there were times when I was really down that I wondered when it was ever going to get better and if I was going to ever feel God's presence again. When you have known that kind of a void in your life, you really do end up appreciating the good things in your life more than before. I have heard a quote that says something to the effect that we shouldn't forget in the darkness what we have seen in the light, but sometime during Lent I heard someone say that the opposite is just as true; that we should never forget in the light what we have seen in the darkness. Those times of darkness in life give so much perspective to the times of joy, and we can appreciate them more.