Eight Great Things

Eight Great Things

Here are 8 great things that I loved about yesterday…

8) Seeing our deacons and other men out in orange vests directing traffic. They did a great job directing incoming cars to spots as they opened up all morning and especially between services.

7) Giving every visitor a copy of the excellent little book “The Cross Centered Life.”

6) Amy made an Easter cake. The ingredients of this cake : Cake, Whip Cream, Icecream Sandwiches, More whip cream, heath bars.

5) Hearing Michael Card’s great lyrics for Love Crucified Arose. Jim sounded so great accompanied by cello and classical guitar.

Love crucified arose

And the grave became a place of hope

For the heart that sin

and sorrow broke

Is beating once again

4) John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter.

What a brilliant send up to those who talk God and hope and Jesus and love but deny the fundamental realities of the gospel.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day.

3) Adam was up on the platform playing clarinet. Katie was in the second row with their baby girl. This little one had to be the tiniest person in our sanctuary and yet wearing the biggest Easter bonnet. Adorable.

2) Bringing a gospel invitation to the not yet converted out of 1 Corinthians 15:9. In that verse Paul says “I am Kaddafi. Yet God loved me and saved me.” There was no one here in our church yesterday that is beyond the reach of God’s rescuing love.

1) Bringing a gospel celebration to the converted out of 1 Corinthians 15:55. That verse is glorified gloating over sin, death and the grave. That verse is a theological victory dance. Christ’s resurrection gives us the victory.