Empty and Easter: the time when empty did not have a negative connotation.

Has it ever happened to you? You are driving along on the highway and happen to glance down at the fuel gauge. And you are shocked to see the needle pointing all the way to the left, directly over the big, red "E."

Empty. It's one of those words in the English language that almost always has negative connotations.

Come with me for a moment and bring your imagination along. Picture a village in the Sudan. The land surrounding it is barren. A vicious combination of drought and warfare has devastated the region. Entering the village, we notice the people -- women and children mostly -- standing or sitting listlessly outside the crude buildings that serve as their homes. Many face starvation. There simply hasn't been enough food available. Their stomachs are empty.

Come to another place, a large city in our own land. It is night-time, and the streets and sidewalks are empty. Why? Because, in this part of the city, it is dangerous to be out after dark. Fear stalks alley-ways and street corners. The threat of violence keeps people inside, cut off from the human interchange necessary for a healthy community. Empty streets mean all is not well.

There are many kinds of emptiness in our world. A once-thriving steel plant stands empty in a small town. A vacant chair at a family's Easter Sunday dinner table gives mute testimony to the absence of a loved one who always sat there. A calendar with blank pages hangs on the wall of a room in a nursing home, a calendar that used to be filled with engagements and appointments before the man lying on the bed suffered an unexpected stroke.

No one likes the feelings of emptiness -- whether parents experiencing the "empty nest," wage-earners contemplating empty wallets, pastors looking out on empty pews. But to be human is to experience feelings of emptiness. When hearts are empty, life hardly seems worth living.

How ironic, then, that for Christians who celebrate Easter joy, gladness centres on something empty. A tomb.

John's Gospel says Mary Magdalene's first reaction upon seeing the stone rolled away from the tomb's entrance was distress. Tomb robbing was not unheard of then. There was a Roman law dealing with the crime. When she saw the stone had been removed, Mary ran to find Peter and John. "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb," she exclaimed, "and we do not know where they have laid him!"

What else was she to think? Surely nothing as unthinkable and wonderful as resurrection. Only that the dead body of the one she loved had been stolen. And when the two disciples entered the tomb and found it empty, the Gospel tells us they "believed." Believed what? That he was risen, or merely that what Mary had told them was true -- that his body was missing?

An empty tomb alone was not cause for joy. Joy did not happen until the risen Lord was met, until his resurrection was confirmed by one word spoken to the woman who wept for him. "Mary!" he said. And, suddenly, the empty tomb was transformed for Mary from a symbol of despair into a symbol of the joy of all joys.

This is still true. Easter depends on what we allow it to do to us and for us. For some, perhaps even for most, Easter is simply a pleasant rite of spring, a happy milestone on the journey from a wearisome winter to the warm days and emerging greenery of April and May. And that is enough. For some.

But for others, Easter is more, much more. It means the promise that emptiness is not the condition for which they are made. It means an invitation to hold up their empty cups to the Lord of life so they can be filled. It means an empty tomb outside Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago still symbolizes the final victory God will win over every evil, over every emptiness that plagues the human family. It means an assurance that death does not have the final word.

Easter is not only one day out of each year. It is not merely the best day of each year. Easter is an ongoing reality that happens whenever trust wins out over suspicion, whenever kindness pushes meanness aside, whenever goodness overcomes evil. Easter happens whenever empty hearts hear Jesus say, "I came so that everyone would have life, and have it in its fullness" (John 10:10, CEV). Because the tomb was empty, Easter is an answer to every emptiness you and I may encounter.

In one of his poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote this of the risen Christ: "Let him easter in us ..." Easter is a verb! How absolutely right that is. Yes, let him easter in us, the Christ who is risen.

He is risen indeed! And so, by God's grace, are we.

Kenneth L. Gibble is a free-lance writer living in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.