From
Pastor’s Desk..................
This year Easter has taken on new meaning for me. As
a local pastor of more than a few years I found myself pretty dulled to
the significance of the empty tomb of Easter morning. I guess it had become
academic or at least just for those in pastoral care.
All that changed as both my brother and sister called to tell me that
my mother was close to death and I had best be on the next plane to FL.
By the time I arrived to join my siblings, mother had fallen sleep never
to regain consciousness. We spent from Friday until early Tuesday morning
at her bed side – reading, praying, talking and holding her hand
assuring her that we loved her in those last hours.
I can’t say it was how I had planned to spend those few days, but
it did have a profound affect on all of us. Most of her friends made the
incorrect assumption that
she was teetering on the brink between life and death those days, but
that was incorrect. Mother was and is a woman of faith. She was teetering
between life and eternal life – not death. She knew her Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ. She now rests in the hands of God – there
is no better place. We could not wish her back to this place of suffering.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that we shall not miss her. My brother,
sister and I have concluded by this time she has probably taken it upon
herself to advise the good Lord on how heaven ought to be run. I hope
He has the sense to give in because she will never get off His back until
He does.
So Easter is about life. It is about being so tightly tied to Jesus Christ
that we die with Him and then rise as He did. That’s the essence
of the Christian faith and it has new meaning for me this year.
PEACE & JOY,
Pastor
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