When Paul Raushenbush, president of the Interfaith Alliance, tried to find a children’s book with solid theology about Easter for his sons, he couldn’t find one. And so he wrote his own — Together We Rise: An Easter Story for All of Us.
As he says in the introduction of the book:
“I lamented, as Holy Week rapidly arrived, that I didn’t have a children’s story of Jesus that reflected my beliefs that I could share with my two sons and their young minds, hearts and spirits. So, I boiled down two thousand years of theology and almost three decades of ministry to the words you are about to read.”
I asked Paul if he’d read Together We Rise for the Cottage community. He was delighted to do so — and he enlisted his son, Walter, to help him.
It is a tradition in many churches to read the entire Passion story on Good Friday. This beautiful book shares the whole story of this week with an invitation for all of us to experience God’s love anew.
Of this story, Paul says, “My hope is that young people will learn the radical message of love and liberation that Jesus brought to the world, especially in this time when too many are using Jesus and Christianity as a bludgeon and a screen for bigotry and hate.”
That sounds like more than a hope. It sounds like a prayer. And to that, I say, AMEN.
We rise with God’s Love that brings us together to love one another,
we rise to bring God’s promise of justice and freedom to earth as in heaven.
We rise to remember that each one of us, especially you who are reading this book right now is a part of God’s heart, made in God’s image, worth of dignity and respect.
Jesus’ great invitation to rise in love continues today—for you and for all of us to join together in the Beloved Community of God here on earth.
— Paul Raushenbush
INSPIRATION
for Good Friday
Hope is a crushed stalk
Between clenched fingers
Hope is a bird’s wing
Broken by a stone.
Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty —
A word whispered with the wind,
A dream of forty acres and a mule,
A cabin of one’s own and a moment to rest,
A name and place for one’s children
And children’s children at last . . .
Hope is a song in a weary throat.
Give me a song of hope
And a world where I can sing it.
Give me a song of faith
And a people to believe in it.
Give me a song of kindliness
And a country where I can live it.
Give me a song of hope and love
And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.
— Pauli Murray, “Dark Testament Verse 8”
‘It is finished,’ he said. You could hear him say it,
the words almost a whisper, then not even that,
but an echo so faint it seemed no longer to come
from him, but from elsewhere. This was his moment,
his final moment. “It is finished,” he said into a vastness
that led to an even greater vastness, and yet all of it
within him. He contained it all. That was the miracle,
to be both large and small in the same instant, to be
like us, but more so, then finally to give up the ghost,
which is what happened. And from the storm that swirled
a formal nakedness took shape, the truth of disguise
and the mask of belief were joined forever.
— Mark Strand, “The Seven Last Words,” stanza 6
It is time to go.
I can smell it.
Breathe it
Touch it.
And something in me
Trembles.
I will not cry.
Only sit bewildered.
Brave and helpless
That it is time.
Time to go.
Time to step out
Of the world
I shaped and watched
Become.
Time to let go
Of the status and
The admiration.
Time to go.
To turn my back
On a life that throbs
With my vigor
And a spirit
That soared
Through my tears.
Time to go
From all I am
To all I have
Not yet become.
— Edwina Gately
And it was--But SUNDAY was comin!!
I was so eager to read this book when I learned of it, so am grateful that you actually shared the author reading it and sharing the illustrations. My only regret was that instead of recognizing the women at the tomb, he spoke of "the people". I wished he would have upheld the role of the women in this very important story. I am always looking for children's books about Scripture stories that I can share with my granddaughters that help us claim the powerful women who have been a part of our Christian heritage. Otherwise the message is a meaningful one that give us all greater incite into the Resurrection story and how it relates to us today;