In a Place You Never Thought to Be, the Sun Still Rises
- Maggie Wallem Rowe
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The winner of our April giveaway, If a Church Pew Could Talk, is Miriam H of Fletcher, NC. The book will be mailed to you this week. Congratulations!
Personal prayer request: I’ll be flying to New England early this Friday to speak at a weekend retreat for Christian women leaders. Would you ask the Lord to give me His wisdom and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to serve these gifted ones?
AUDIO LETTER
(This is a short one, friends— pardon the tears.)
AS THE DAY GRADUALLY BEGAN TO BRIGHTEN this past Easter Sunday, the pastor’s voice lifted above the sound of the Abaco Sea breaking onto the sugar-sand beach at his back: “HE IS RISEN!”
And even as God’s servant called out that time-honored truth, over a hundred believers shouted back in affirmation: “HE IS RISEN INDEED!”
In my seven decades, I’ve watched the sun rise on Easter morning in the company of other Christ-followers at churches in the Midwest, New England, North Carolina, and Norway, but I certainly never expected to celebrate Resurrection Day 2025 with believers in the Bahamas.
At an auction last year to support a Christian charity, good friends bid on a week’s stay at a cottage in Treasure Cay, a small beachside cluster of villas on Great Abaco Island, inviting us to join them. Never having been to the Bahamas, Mike and I were thrilled at the opportunity as well as surprised to discover the islands are only three hours away by air from Asheville.
The “catch?” The only week that would work for the four of us and the owner was Easter week.
Our friends are committed believers as well as members of our home church. Did we really want to be absent from our church family during the holiest week of the liturgical year?
I am a huge fan of organized religion. Disorganized, too. I’m here for the worn out and the used up. The Bible brainiacs and the babes in Christ. The veteran pew-warmers and the ones who’ve just crawled up the aisle on penitent knees.
I don’t know if the Church needs me, but I sure do need the Church. It’s my place to believe, to belong, to become. And you don’t need to go to seminary to know that the Church is not a building but a body.
A body that has battled and brawled over the centuries but has also been used by God in its glorious imperfection to do His work.
Building hospitals for healing and schools for educating.
Establishing missions for outreach and composing music for inspiration.
Commissioning artwork from the masters who served one Master. Ordaining pastors and priests, deacons and elders, laymen and women as hands and feet.
Constructing habitats for the poor, homes for the orphaned, refugee centers for the displaced.
The beautiful body of Christ so wonderfully eclectic in ethnicity, denomination, tribe and tongue.
As Bible teacher Beth Moore has written, “We don’t have to have matching plates to sit at the same table as long as Christ is seated at the head.” (Entrusted, p. 25)
Here on Great Abaco Island, the ocean dazzles your eyes even as the landscape breaks your heart. On our ride from the airport in Marsh Harbor, we passed miles of empty lots and abandoned cars and homes—remnants from the fall of 2019 when hurricane Dorian made landfall and history here as the worst natural disaster ever to befall the Bahamas. Almost everything manmade was destroyed.
As dawn broke on Easter morning over the turquoise sea, faces emerged from the darkness.
Many of those present lost everything here but their lives six years ago, I thought, and most know others who lost even that.
Yet the sea with its bounty of food remains, and with renewed faith and fierce love, the people regather in community to rebuild.
On Resurrection Day of 2025, we four North Carolinians stood with our Bahamian brothers and sisters to bear witness to their faith.
“He is risen!” called the pastor.
“He is risen indeed!” responded the people.
“We didn’t ‘go away’ for Easter,” my husband murmured. “Easter is right here.”
And so it is, and so shall it ever be.
- Maggie Wallem Rowe, copyright 2025
IT'S YOUR TURN. Do you have a favorite Easter memory to share, maybe even from this year? Please leave a comment or reply to today's letter. I respond to each one.