Life Here and There

I just wanted to take a minute to pass along my own personal blessings gleaned from yesterday and from the whole Easter week. Here are some things that have touched my heart…

• Jesus was glorified all over the world as people presented the truth of the death, burial and resurrection.
• Our church was packed with people, some of whom brought friends and family to hear the message.
• My parents came into town and spent the weekend with us, so we hung out, talked, and ate a lot.
• I mentioned on Palm Sunday that anybody donating plastic eggs should probably stuff them with little Milky Ways (I’m a caramel nut). Yesterday morning, I discovered a whole package on my desk!
• Justin and I received an enormous gift last week. A church member was burdened to make a donation to purchase for each of us a copy of the Logos Bible Software: Scholar’s Library, which is loaded with material!
• We had great sunrise service in spite of the rain, and a wonderful breakfast together as a church family.

I could name more, but wanted to take just a minute and praise God for His goodness today! Easter, for me, is not the culmination of our preparation for it so much as it is the fresh beginning of a renewed sensitivity to the work of the living Christ all around us. I’m awake and ready for whatever He has next for us at Bethel. Bring it on, God, I’ll try to be ready!

This week has been great. No complaints, so don’t think my talking about emotional up’s and down’s has much to do at all with outward circumstances. Rather, Easter weekend brings it’s emotional roller coaster in the form of our identifying with Jesus.

We travel with Him through the shadows of persecution, the intimacy of the upper room and His final days in the home of His friends at Bethany, and then into the Garden of Gethsemane where Satan and his minions began to chuckle at the sheer intensity of His suffering. We see Him sweating drops of blood over the thought of His coming assumption of our sin and His separation from the Father on the cross, a separation He had not experience for all of eternity. We see Him stripped and spat upon, beaten and bloodied, nailed to a cross and mocked until His last breath.

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