Allelujia! Christ Is Risen!

                                                        

Thanks to my grandsons for sharing their handiwork. Happy Easter!

Be sure to share your alleluia's today and please join us for our Independent Presbyterian Church's Easter service being live-streamed at 11:00 AM if you do not have a home church. The readings and sermon will be live, but the moving music from our full choir and organist and all the beautiful Easter lives will be streamed from last year's Easter celebration. It should be amazing.

If school was in session we would have shared this story as a lesson and at the end of our service, and we would have filed out joyfully singing, "Christ the Lord is risen today, Allelujia!" It would have also been presented in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atriums. Instead, I am sharing the story as it appears in our Lenten Boxes. It is a glorious story to share with your children.

As we recall the story of Mary returning to the tomb, only to find it empty, she stood weeping outside. Looking into the tomb, she saw two white angels sitting where Jesus had been lying, one at the head and one at the foot. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they had laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!"
(which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and she told them that he had said these things to her.              John 20:1 - 18

Spend  today thanking God for the resurrected Christ and celebrating the gift you have been given. Also thank God for your family and enjoy spending this special day with them. Eat together. Relax and have fun. Be thankful. Be sure you have hung your Easter Art in your windows so your neighbors can enjoy your work as they walk by. And hunt Easter eggs!