Every night when I was growing up, my mother made fresh biscuits from scratch for supper.  I’d go into the kitchen, and she would be at the counter.  I’d watch her sift flour, reach into the Crisco can for a healthy dollop of pure shortening, pour in some buttermilk, add a pinch of this and pinch of that, knead it all together with her care-worn hands, and roll it out with a rolling pin.  Then she would use a dented cookie cutter to make perfectly round shapes, roll up the scraps of dough, cut out a few more, and then put them in the oven.

What came out was pure heaven — one of the best things in life.

During my last year in high school, my mother was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.  Ten months later I was home from my first year in college for her funeral.  Then, that summer, I went back home.  I got a summer job driving a dump truck for a North Carolina Department of Transportation road paving crew.  I got home from work one night and I told my father that I was going to make biscuits for dinner.

I did what I had seen my mother do hundreds of times.  I put some flour and shortening and buttermilk in a bowl.  Added a pinch of this and a pinch of that.  Mixed it together, rolled it out, and used my mother’s biscuit cutter to make perfectly round shapes.  I put them in the oven and waited for heaven.

What came out of the oven, however, can best be described as toasty hot hockey pucks.  My father picked one up while it was still too hot and dropped it on the floor.  It made a loud thud.  “That would wake the dead,” he said.  “Yeah, they’re resurrection biscuits,” I quipped.  “You know, they could wake the dead.”

We laughed hard for the first time in a long time.

Life without resurrection, a pinch of resurrection faith, can come out like those resurrection biscuits.

Of course, what I did not add was baking soda.  All it would have taken was a pinch; that would have caused those biscuits to come out of the oven flaky and tasty.  It’s like a resurrection plot, some chemical process that I do not understand could make those biscuits rise and become a taste of heaven.

Sometimes God has to plot the resurrection with just a pinch of this, or a dollop of that.
A dark week begins today.  We have a long way to go to get to resurrection.  But God is plotting, looking ahead beyond death, and in just a few days, Easter will be here!  But if you go to church on Easter morning looking for Jesus, I’m sorry, he won’t be there.

The tomb is empty.  Terror and amazement, I know.

But if you look in your heart, and add just a pinch faith, a dollop of hope, that’s where you’ll find Jesus on Easter morning, pure heaven — like a resurrection biscuit.