By John Goldstein

During the week before Easter, I returned to San Juan, Puerto Rico, by público, or shared taxi. The terminal was near the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. My wife graduated from the university in 1960 and had made her way to the mainland, like so many before and since.

Pausing to take a picture of the clock tower that stands in the center of the campus, I thought of those who had traveled from this spot to an unfamiliar land, where they married, established families and set down roots in the soil that became their final resting place.

Before I left Puerto Rico, there was one more place I had to go. It was to a beach, now newly renovated. Many years before on a then-shabby beach, I stood helpless, looking at the vast ocean before me while at my feet in the sand sat a woman in a long, flowing dress, sobbing from her innermost being. Just moments before her 15- and 16-years-old sons had gone below the surface of the water and had not emerged.

Looking up at the sky, I asked: “God, why did you not get me to this beach a few minutes sooner?”

I could have saved one, probably both of those boys.

“What kind of a God are you that lets two boys drown before your eyes? Are you so helpless in the face of evil?”

Time passed and now, years later, I stood on the same beach, pondering the question I first asked so long ago. A short distance from where I stood, a young couple watched their son – a child of no more than three years – run in circles, barefoot in the sand. His arms were outstretched like wings, and his face radiated glee. His exuberance was infectious, but contrasted with the tragedy that had taken place here many years earlier. Then there was an aura of grief and despair, but now there was newness: new ball fields, new beach and with the young couple and their child, new life.

The wind still blew in from the sea, and the waves still grated against the shore as they had from the formation of the earth in God’s original creation – a creation holy in origin, but despoiled by sin, and yet, redeemed by His love.

The wind and sea formed the waves that incessantly rolled in from beyond the horizon, but with Easter they were waves that now rolled onto the sands of a new creation.

Slowly, I realized that I had the answer to the question I had been asking for so long. The resurrection of Jesus has triumphed over evil. By faith, we know that evil has been vanquished. By experience, we know that it still exists. This is the mystery: vanquished, but not extinguished.

We must live with this reality until the final trumpet. Then, the new creation will be revealed in all its glory, and two teenage boys will shine like the sun.