Steven LaChance Blog

Easter doesn’t arrive for me with trumpets or tradition. It doesn’t require polished belief or perfect faith. It shows up gently—in the small, unnoticed places, in the quiet stirrings of life returning where it once seemed lost.

I’ve always been drawn to the old spiritual, “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” Not only because it was passed down to me, but because it speaks to something I’ve come to know through living: that even the smallest life is seen. Even the fragile, the questioning, the outsider. There is a deeper knowing, a sacred presence that holds us—even now.

“I sing because I’m happy,

I sing because I’m free.

His eye is on the sparrow,

And I know He watches me.”

This Easter doesn’t arrive in a vacuum. It comes during a dark night in our collective story—a time when religion has once again been distorted and weaponized by the empire. Where what was once rooted in liberation and love is being reshaped into a tool of dominance. A faith made to serve whiteness, straightness, and control. A nation baptized in fear and called holy.

But that is not who we are.

This country is not the empire. It is not a monolith. The soul of this place is multiracial, multi-faith, queer, questioning, tender, ancient, and becoming. And true faith—living faith—has never belonged to a select few. We are meant to be of faith, not of religion. Not of the empire. Faith that liberates, not locks. That builds tables, not walls. That watches over the sparrow—not just those perched high above.

Easter, if it means anything, is resistance to the empire’s lie. It is what rises in spite of it. What lives again when the world has tried to bury it.

The sparrow doesn’t sit on the throne. It flutters at the edges. Small. Ordinary. Overlooked. And still, it is seen. Still, it is beloved. That’s the kind of gospel I trust: the one that says you matter even when power says you don’t. You belong, even when they try to cast you out. You are sacred—even if you’ve never been told so.

Jesus didn’t survive the empire. He was crushed by it. But love does not stay buried. He rose beyond the reach of systems, and still walks wherever people are breaking, questioning, becoming. If resurrection means anything, it means the margins hold the miracle.

So this Easter, I keep my eyes on the sparrow. I sing—not because everything is okay, but because I still believe. I believe in a love that doesn’t ask for credentials. I believe in a grace that doesn’t flinch. I believe in the kind of rising that begins deep in the dirt, unnoticed, and still unstoppable.

And I know—we are being watched over.

Even here. Even now.