The Best Letters Come from Prison

There’s a certain kind of strength that tends to get most of the attention in this world, and you don’t have to look very hard to recognize it. It’s the voice that fills a room without asking permission, the kind that makes people turn their heads before they’ve even decided if they agree. It’s the swing that tries to send the ball over the left field fence, preferably with enough distance to make people stand up before it even lands. That kind of strength is visible, measurable, and makes for good highlights. Somewhere along the way, most of us quietly absorbed the idea that this is what strength is supposed to look like. But every now and then, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice a different kind of strength moving through the very same space, and it’s easy to miss because it doesn’t announce itself. It shows up in the person who could say something sharp and decides not to, or in the moment when someone clearly has the upper hand and realizes that winning isn’t actually the most important thing happening in the room. It’s the kind of strength that doesn’t need to prove anything because it already knows what it’s carrying, and if you blink, you can miss it entirely. Baseball has a way of revealing that kind of strength, usually when nobody is expecting it, and I remember one of those moments pretty clearly. It was Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, bottom of the ninth inning, with the Yankees leading by two runs and Mariano Rivera on the mound, which in those days felt about as close to automatic as baseball ever gets. When Rivera came in, games didn’t so much continue as they slowly came to a conclusion. Arizona managed to get a runner on base, which was already more hope than most teams found in that situation, and then Jay Bell stepped in to pinch-hit for Randy Johnson. He was a guy who knew how to swing the bat, fourteen home runs that year, over seventy runs driven in, and enough experience to understand exactly what October pressure feels like when it settles into your chest. And somewhere in that moment, whether it came from the dugout or from some instinct inside him, he squared around and bunted. It didn’t work the way you might draw it up. The runner was thrown out at third, and if you just glance at the box score, it probably looks like a mistake. The kind of decision that makes you wonder what he was thinking. Except the inning didn’t end, and that matters. Because the next batter, Tony Womack, doubled and tied the game, and a few moments later, Luis Gonzalez ended the World Series with a soft single that barely made it out of the infield. Everybody remembers the Gonzalez hit, but almost nobody remembers the bunt, which is often how this kind of strength works. Sometimes the strongest player on the field is the one who knows when not to swing. Even when everything in you wants to, even when it doesn’t work out cleanly, and even when it looks, at least for a moment, like you got it wrong. And it turns out Jesus had something to say about that kind of strength. “Blessed are the meek.” Most of us hear the word "meek" and picture someone who gets overlooked or pushed around. We often think of someone who doesn’t have much presence, while louder people take up all the oxygen in the room. But that’s not what Jesus was describing. The word He uses is praus , a word that was used in the first century for a wild horse that had been trained, not broken or diminished, but still strong. A horse still capable of running full speed, still a warhorse, just one that had learned when to run and when to stand still. And Jesus looks at that kind of person and says makarios . Not “happy” or “fortunate,” at least not in the way we usually mean those words. Something closer to this: God is with you . God is on your side . Not because you are the loudest or the strongest or the one who swings the hardest, but because you have learned something the world keeps forgetting. Jesus lived that kind of strength. He didn’t avoid conflict, but He also wasn’t interested in winning it the way everyone else was. And there’s a difference there that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. He carried power without needing to prove it. That might be the clearest sign that it was real to begin with. Somehow, Jesus knew not only what He could do but when not to do it. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Not conquer it, which is how we usually imagine strength working, but inherit it, which means it comes as a gift rather than something you muscle your way into. I’ll be honest with you, this is one of the Beatitudes I am still learning how to live into, because the bunt does not come naturally to me. My first instinct is usually to swing away, the kind of swing that either clears the fence or leaves you walking back to the dugout wondering what just happened. Restraint is something I have to choose, and I don’t always choose it well. And that might be the clearest sign that it was real all along. Maybe “blessed are the meek” isn’t describing people who have already figured this out so much as it’s inviting the rest of us to keep learning how to choose differently, even when the swing feels more satisfying and even when we have every reason to let it go. The Unlikely Altar for the meek isn’t something you can photograph or circle on a map, because it doesn’t stay still long enough for that. It shows up in the space between what flashes through your mind and what finally comes out of your mouth, in that quiet moment where you realize you could go one way and, almost gently, decide to go another. And more often than we notice, that’s exactly where God meets us, not in the noise of the moment but in the choosing of it, in the restraint that nobody else may ever see but that somehow still changes everything. Blessed are the meek, not because they are weak, but because they know they could swing and choose what matters more. Because sometimes the strongest thing you can do is not swing at all.

Over the years, I have stood at countless gravesides, either as a pastor or as a celebrant, I have learned a profound truth. Every family handles grief differently. And you can see it in the way they stand and in the silence that sits over them like a pall. And even though I have witnessed it many times, I am never ready for the parents. I have watched a mom and dad lower a casket so small it breaks something in the air around it. There are no words. No theology can make sense of it. The flowers on top of the casket seem almost cruel in their brightness. And the dirt - well, it is just dirt. Then there are the parents who stand on the edge of that hole, trying to make sense of the senseless. When I watch the family and friends standing at the grave, I feel the full weight of what it means to be human, which is to say, the full weight of what it means to love something you cannot keep. And somewhere in the back of my mind, in those moments, I hear a question I have never been able to answer, standing there in the grass: What does God say to this? Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them…Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. If you have ever stood at a grave and someone turned to you and said those words, I imagine you might have felt something catch in your throat. Please understand, not because the words are wrong. But because in that moment, with the dirt still fresh and the flowers still bright and the people you love still unable to make their feet move toward the car, comfort feels very far away. And if someone had leaned over and whispered, "Happy are those who mourn,” — you might have said a few words you would regret later, then walked away. And you would have had every right to. But please know that is not what Jesus said. He said makarios . And makarios doesn't mean happy. It never did. It means something closer to — God is with you . Right here at the grave. Right now, in the midst of the hurt and the questions. In the moment when no words can make any sense. Jesus says, Makarios … He doesn’t say, "Let's wait till the grief gets easier. ” He doesn’t say, “Time heals all wounds.” And He doesn’t say, “You will get over this.” He simply says, “Blessed are those that mourn…” The theologian Frederick Dale Bruner said that when Jesus used the word makarios , which is translated to blessed , he was reminding the people that God is with them. It is as if God taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, “I am with you.” And you know what I hold onto every funeral I stand with families? I hold on to the belief, in ways I can’t fully understand or explain, that those words are true. Okay, maybe God doesn’t just whisper them, He proclaims them in a big voice, bigger than the smallest casket even. He states them in such a way that they echo through every graveyard and every tomb. “Even in this moment, especially in this moment, I am with you. I am on your side!” You see, I believe that because the God of Easter is not a God who watches grief from a distance and then sends an email. He is a God who came down, who stood at His own Son's grave. Who knows what those parents are feeling — not as theology, not as doctrine — but from the core of His being. That is what Easter means even at the hardest grave. Not that death didn't happen. Not that the pain disappears with the sunrise. But that the God who walked out of the tomb on Sunday morning did it for exactly this moment. For the parents at the smallest grave. For the widow who can't make her feet move. For everyone standing in the grass, wondering what God could possibly say to this. He says, "I am with you." Even now. Maybe especially now. And I'll tell you something I don't always say out loud. When I get in my Jeep after a graveside service and drive away, I sometimes wonder. And I hope. I hope that God does more than whisper. But then I remember Easter. It doesn't look like holy ground. It doesn't feel like it either. But it is. But maybe that is exactly where the God of Easter shows up. Not after the grief passes. Not when the marker is finally in place, and the grass has grown back, and people have stopped bringing casseroles. But right there in the silence that sits over a family like a pall. In the moment when love has nowhere left to go. The grave is an Unlikely Altar . But Easter was an unlikely morning. On this Easter, may we know, may we remember, may we never forget — we have a God who doesn’t watch from a distance. Our God comes down and stands at the grave. And in a voice bigger than any casket, bigger than any grief, bigger than any question we have ever carried, He proclaims: I am with you. Even now. Maybe especially now. He is risen. And that changes everything.