New Identity, Based on Truth 

     Humans are born; we live our lives and die.  

     Oh, there are differences in how we live, but death wins. 

     God himself, in the person of Jesus, died on the cross to pay for our sins. Then he came back to life, offering new life to all of us. Death doesn't have to win. 

     Father, Son and Holy Spirit - with more love than we have - want us to be born again. (Ask Nicodemus.) If you...know how to give good gifts...how much more will our Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? - Luke 11:13. 

     On Resurrection Sunday we wrote about God's message through Peter, chapter 3:18-22. In the days of Noah, God flooded the disobedient world. Only Noah and his family survived. 

     God tells us through Peter that the flood symbolizes baptism...that now saves us also...a pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at God's right hand...with angels and power in submission to him. 

     Baptism is an obedient expression of our repentance, our faith in Christ and commitment. Once baptized, we belong to Christ and (spiritually) have died and risen with him. God wants more from us, but baptism opens the way.  

          Romans 6:3-5   Galatians 3:27   Colossians 2:11-12   Acts 2:38-39

     No one ever imagined a world flood. But Noah believed God and survived.  

     This blogger was baptized as a baby, like so many of us. At age 30, I was baptized, by my decision. Which one did God favor?  

             Jimmy   

Yes, we know this is a serious day for Iran

Easter Sunday is over.

But the resurrection daily calls on sinners to believe and repent.

Baseball History 

     In my last year of college, I was walking toward my appointment when I happened on a group of students listening to the seventh game of the 1960 world series, Pittsburgh Pirates vs. the vaunted New York Yankees. I think each of the Yanks' three wins were blow outs. 

     I moved on and returned to find...nobody. Was the game over?

     The Pirates' young Bill Mazeroski, known for his second base defense, came up to lead off the bottom of the 9th inning, score 9-9. 

     While I was posing for my photo, I missed seeing Mazeroski crush a fastball over Pittsburgh's left field fence to secure victory, and his place in baseball history. 

     Mazeroski died this February, at age 89. 

Football History 

     A football coach led six different football programs to bowl games. Lou Holtz died in March. He too was 89. 

     He took over William & Mary, and after a short time with the New York Jets, he was an assistant at Ohio State, coached Arkansas and Minnesota. Then he coached Notre Dame, winning 100 games in 11 seasons, including the Fighting Irish's last national championship, in 1988.  

     Holtz then broadcast football for CBS and ESPN. We remember him as very likeable, even when he brought Notre Dame (our lady) to Columbus for a tussle. 

                           Jimmy 

The Resurrection  

     Early Sunday morning, after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene (for whom Jesus had driven out seven demons) went to the tomb. There was a violent earthquake. An angel rolled back the stone and sat on it. The frightened guards became like dead men. 

     Mary heard a voice, thinking it was the gardener. Jesus said, "Mary." She turned around and saw him. She cried out, "Teacher!" "Go to my brothers," he said. "I am returning to my God and your God." 

     Jesus' "brothers" didn't believe Mary. But Peter and John ran to the tomb and saw strips of linen and the burial cloth folded up. They still didn't understand from Scripture that Jesus would rise from the dead. 

     Two men who heard the news were walking from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus, seven miles away. They wished that Jesus was the one who was going to redeem Israel. A stranger began walking with them, saying "How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory. He explained Moses, all the prophets and about himself. Reaching home, they invited him in. He suddenly disappeared. 

     "Their eyes were opened and they hurried back to Jerusalem and the 11 disciples." Truth was breaking out. 

     Later, Jesus appeared to his disciples, not through their bolted door; he just appeared. He invited them to touch his damaged hands and feet. He was not a ghost, but flesh and bones. And he told them, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Receive the Holy Spirit." 

The above a summary of reports. Some varied.

Note: As my relatives immediately changed facial expressions when they died, their minds, not brains, went somewhere. Jesus went somewhere after he cried out on the cross and gave up his spirit. Like other authors in the Bible, Peter wrote what God revealed. In 1 Peter chapter 3, that Saturday - between Friday's crucifixion and Sunday's resurrection - Jesus went to Hades, just short of hell. He gave Noah's disobedient generation a scolding, apparently. Peter also wrote, "The Spirit of Christ spoke in times past through the prophets." We will have more from Peter sometime this week. 

   

  

Jesus, the way to the Father

     In John chapter 14 - Jesus was beginning to inform his disciples I am going to prepare a place for you. You know the way to the place where I am going. 

     Thomas said, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Good question. Jesus answered,

     I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

     Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." 

     Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Don't you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me, who is doing his work.

     We understand that everything Jesus - born by a virgin - taught, he received from the Father. On Friday, we wrote of the crucifixion. On Saturday, Thomas, Philip and other disciples, and the women close to Jesus are extremely upset. If Jesus and the Father are/were as one, how can this be? His death on the horrible cross? How can the dead go anywhere, much less a very special place? 

     Mary Magdalene and two other women, weeping over the death of their Jewish Lord, are preparing spices to anoint Jesus' body at daybreak after the Sabbath day. Of course, they don't know who will roll the heavy stone away from the tomb. 

   

     

Good (?) Friday 

They Mock Jesus

Then the governor's men took Jesus into the Praetorium...

They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him...

And twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. 

They mocked, "Hail king of the Jews!" They spit on him and struck him. 

On the Way to the Cross  

Soldiers took charge of Jesus. 

Jesus told women mourning for him, Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves.

The Crucification 

They forced him to carry a cross. They brought him to "the place of the skull." 

Those hurled insults at him. "Come down if you are the Son of God." 

And they crucified him. They cast lots to see what clothes each would get. 

The "notice of charge" against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. 

Those who passed by hurled insults. Chief priests and teachers mocked him. 

"He saved others, but he can't save himself!" 

The Death of Jesus 

Darkness came over the land. When Jesus had cried out, he gave up his spirit.

The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

The earth shook and rocks split. Many holy people were raised to life.

Those guarding Jesus were terrified and said: "Surely he was the Son of God." 

The Burial of Jesus

A rich man asked Pilate for Jesus' body. He placed it in his own new tomb.

The Guard at the Tomb 

Chief priests and Pharisees asked that the tomb be secure to prevent deception.  

So they made the tomb as secure as they knew how and posted a guard.  

Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, John 19 

None of us deserve the substitute He became for us.

Young children are the exception.

The Suffering Iranians  

     Columnist Lynn Vincent recalls her long-ago meeting with teenagers Mohammed and Hussein, 7,000 miles from their home, Iran. 

     She says, "Their parents sent them to America, out of the killing path of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the radical Shia cleric, and his followers, who called their uprising 'the Islamic Revolution.'" 

     "Khomeini promised justice, peace and dignity and the worship of Allah. Many believed and supported him. Instead, Khomeini institutionalized repression. The Islamic Republic fused religion with politics and purged dissenters." 

     "Women lost legal rights, were forced to wear the hijab, and were beaten if they refused. Protesters were shot in the streets. That's how two Iranian teens wound up in Scottsboro, Alabama. Their parents feared for their lives." 

     "All this makes the current U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran very personal to me. I've learned that many parents sent kids to America, while they stayed behind under the boot heals. What American parents can imagine sending their children 7,000 miles from home, even amid simmering racism?" 

     "The people who stayed behind in Iran are still paying the price. They still cry, 'Azadi' 'Azadi' - Freedom! Freedom! Vincent's young friends - now maybe grandparents - "are blessed with self-determination secured by the sacrifice of their parents."

     "But their countrymen still suffer imprisonment, rape and public executions under a dictatorship desperate to hold onto power. Forty-seven years is enough. For the sake of my friends, their families and all families like them, I cry with them. Azadi!" 

Do some of us despise this war to end nuclear threats? Or went along with our President, but now fed up with higher gas prices, wanting this to end, never mind suffering Iranians? Well, the goal was to destroy everything nuclear. 

             Jimmy

 

   

Our Thoughts

     Yesterday we wrote about our thoughts and how they come and go, and sometimes become actions on the broad roads of life. 

     In Isaiah (our favorite Old Testament book) chapter 55, God spoke about thoughts. He addressed those who are thirsty and those who are poor, urging them (us) to come to him. 

     He said David, "my everlasting covenant," is our "witness." David had faulty thoughts, like us, but he ended life a solid follower of God. (And in the New Testament we read that David will govern Jerusalem when the Lord returns.)

     "Seek the Lord," the Lord himself said. "Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Turn to the Lord" for mercy and pardon. 

     God continued, "My thoughts are not your thoughts nor your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." 

     "This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign." 

 That's the "narrow road" God wants us to take.