Easter

The resurrection of the Son of God. Our scripture reading this week comes from

John 20:1-18. I invite you all to read it.

 First of all, Bonne and I like to wish you all a Happy and Blessed Easter.

 Let’s pray together. Lord, thank you for loving us more than life itself. Today our world seems hard and uncertain, so much pain and hurt and heartache surround us and yet, knowing this, you still willingly gave up your life and became God with us and God who rescues us. Thank you, Father, because of your sacrifice, we can spend eternity with you. We know there is no pain you cannot conquer, no hurt you cannot heal, no life you cannot transform. Your death and resurrection prove that nothing is impossible for you. Today and every day, help us fix our hearts and our minds on you. Then as we do, please give us more of your joy, hope ,and peace. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

 This year, Easter Sunday falls during the Covid-19 pandemic. A time when we are secluded in our homes and told to wrap our faces with cloth if we dare to go out for groceries and supplies.

The other day, Bonne sent me to the pharmacy, and I saw people wandering quietly through the isles with gloved hands and masked faces. Get to close , and you will register a wide-eyed look of alarm on the face of the people near. We are in hiding from an invisible beast.

“ The Beast” is what people are naming the virus. It attacks ferociously in the night with spiked fevers, aches, lung binding, and hallucinations. Covid-19 is a breathtaking virus. It’s steals the breath from people’s bodies in a particularly terrifying way. It strikes suddenly leaving us frightened and breathless. With no cure in sight, the only thing we can do is hide away, covering our noses and face with cloth, hoping to keep the aggressive beast away from our lungs.

 Covid-19 Is a death threat that has already made good on many lives.

This brutal virus makes us feel that we are locked up in the dark tomb for an impossibly long duration, as though the darkness of Good Friday might go on forever with a little hope in sight. And yet all around us, we see signs of spring, signs of awakening, signs of hope, signs of resurrection. We now know life that is dampen down now, covered in what feels like funeral clothing. And yet, spring blooms eternal. All around us, birds sing, the sun burst out from the winter clouds, trees bud, flowers unfurl, the ground-thaws, and God unwraps an entirely new landscape of color and life. but for now, we wait.

 I wonder what it must have felt like for Jesus those three days in the tomb, knowing resurrection was imminent, yet waiting for the dawn to come on that magnificent morning when the stone was rolled away, and the sun streamed through, when an angel of the Lord removed the funeral cloth from Jesus face, and the Holy Spirit breathe again the holy breath of life into his stricken body and made it rise like Ezekiel’s bones in the valley of the shadow of death. Three days of darkness. Then, new a

This Easter morning as we celebrate, are we in hope of a new life? A new life in Christ? My hope and my prayer are that, if nothing else good comes of these times, you all come to know Christ as your Savior.

That’s what Easter is all about, a resurrection to new life. Not the same life. But a New Life in Christ!

 So, this year as we celebrate Easter, be certain and know, as we wait in the tomb, that God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost will be with you forever and ever. Amen.

 In His Service,

 Pastor Joe

John 3: 16-17
(Jesus said) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life,” Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
HE IS RISEN!
Changing Your Outlook Opportunities come in all shapes and sizes.
What if those things you see now as obstacles could be seen instead as GOLD BRICKS? Bricks can be used to build a wall or as paving stones for your road to success. You can follow the yellow brick road to where you want to be, or you can remain stymied by that big wall that seals off any progress you want to make. It all depends on how you look at the obstacles…
The point is that perspective is all about how we choose to see things. Because we look as much with our mind as with our eyes, we tend to “see” what we expect to see or what to see. Changing our perspective calls for a willingness to see things differently. That’s the key to developing a positive attitude regardless of what happens to us.
“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” John 5:24

Listen to Audio Sermon 20200412