Scenes from an Everlasting Life

My Easter poem for 2026

Happy Easter! I wish you and yours a blessed weekend as you remember and consider the life of Christ.

Each year I aim to write a poem to explore some what the life and death of Jesus means. Honestly, I was surprised with how this poem came to me this year and the form it took!

I was disrupted by an image of Christ climbing over bodies like the frozen dead on the pathway to Everest’s summit that we often hear about, people who didn’t make it to the top. But these bodies weren’t frozen or unmoving, not ascending either. They were tormented and miserable, bodies Christ stepped over on his descent unto hell.

Now you’re thinking, Gee, Andrew, try to stop selling me on this happy poem!

That was the inception point to this year’s Easter poem. My entry. A quick visit to theological foundations followed (Why do we say Christ “descended unto hell?”; What does 1 Peter 3 really cover?) and a stopover in the dazzling, frightening, magnificent pages of Revelation was next.

I don’t always find it easy to celebrate Easter. I feel so unprepared, so unworthy, too rushed. Even though the day looms for months, I resist walking through the emotion, the tragedy of this day of days.

How can I or anyone ever treat it properly? Must I really consider the cost, see the nail wounds, the scars and blood? I hate this day and I love it. How long should I linger in the punishing brutality of Good Friday? How quickly do I run to the empty tomb?

All of this while knowing it is finished and he is not there. For he is risen. And he is the eternal, resurrected Lord.

It’s a humbling, terrible, wondrous thing to contemplate, Easter.

So, if you approach Easter with resistance, fear, trembling, familiarity, unease, expectation, and hope, then you’re in good company.

I hope you enjoy this poem.

Note: if you're on your phone, turn it to horizontal (so the line breaks appear as they’re meant to appear).

Thanks for reading. And happy Easter. He is risen indeed.

~ AK

Scenes from an Everlasting Life

Easter 2026

On the eternal walls of the new
Jerusalem, gold pure and clear as
glass, between angel sentries with 
blazing swords and the twelve gates of iron
a gallery of memories snatched out of eternity is
set in frames that match the twelve foundations of 
the city’s walls, inlaid with every jewel–amethyst, emerald
agate, sapphire. Their pictures tell
the story of God’s people along its fifteen
hundred miles.

But toward the great 
hall of heaven, where future pilgrimage will
have no tears no weeping
on that long, inclined pathway toward the throne
another gallery of photographs
lines the crystal walls. Set in 
simple wooden frames
cut from the trees of the nations
these images tell the story of Heaven’s 
favourite Son.

Scenes from his everlasting life
hidden moments few on earth could see 
fixed forever along the golden walkway
as the peoples, kings of the earth, walk through the
gates, awed by the craftsmanship, stirred and
quickened by memory. 

The wavecatcher whooping for joy as he 
climbed the swells of Galilee, robes 
soaked through as he hurdles the crest of a roller
the whoop of joy lost in the 
wind, a lock of wet hair 
plastered against his cheek.

The apprentice, hammer in hand
brow wrinkled in concentration as he
aligns two pieces of expensive cedar
silhouette of his carpenter teacher out of 
focus in the background.

The phenom, only twelve, surrounded by 
sages, men shrouded in robes
alight with wisdom of the ages, jaws set 
determined to answer the questions of a young
beardless Nazarene whose clear 
voice and probing questions
have them all leaning in as though he 
pulls them with invisible string.

The stories that would have filled the 
books that could have been written by 
disciples and apostles by 
women who faithfully followed and attended him
the expectant and pushy throngs of people
who peered over peers to catch a glimpse on
windswept hills and stone porticos
fill the frames on these walls.

And then, at the end of that long hallway
a single rectangle black like a thundercloud like
a burned and bombed out village. The three 
long days when every lens, eye 
every heart turned its gaze and what took place
could not be captured or described, only 
imagined as Christ stepped over horrors and
terrors, like so many bodies lining the frozen
ascent on the world's highest peak, only these
burned with rage and fear, alive and agonized
on the descent to hell where absence of goodness
even a single smudge or waft 
was complete.

After this, a final frame
not on a wall but at the end of the hallway, like
a doorway that each person alone must step through
carved out of rock, mounts 
stained red, so narrow nothing but a body
can get through. As the beholder 
steps across the threshold
what they see, if they can catch a glimpse before they fall
down as though dead, more alive than they’ve ever been
will come in a flash, in snapshots: the blood-dipped 
hem of the finest linen; eyes that
flame like fire; diadems shining from a 
crown no other shoulders could bear.

The crucified, eternal
the risen Lord.