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. 

   

 Feeling Guilty?

     If you are like me and many others, we often do or think the wrong thing. On self-examination, we feel guilty, but of course we don't dwell on it or share our guilt with friends. 

     What if someone told us wrong thoughts are not a sin? So said a pastor on TV recently.

     Was he approving wrong thoughts? Not at all. But he explained that human beings as we are, thoughts of all kinds come and go. Jesus knows who we are, and died to pay our penalty. He offers salvation to those who repent - as often as necessary - and strive to think and do what pleases him. 

     There's another mind involved...Satan. He has a mind, all wrong, and he and/or his followers seek to work on our minds. 

     So, while aware of our shortcomings, we should resist allowing the wrong thoughts to take hold. We recognize and replace wrong thoughts with God's thoughts. We may fail, but we repent and move on. 

     Need help? It's there in the Bible God provides. We all want what benefits us to some degree or another. The best benefit is knowledge of the Word of God, which saves us from hell. 

     Let's replace our wrong thoughts as we catch them, and replace them with God's thoughts...plentiful throughout the Bible. 

     Let's replace our hidden sin nature with the truth of God's Word. We will be so glad we did. No one, not the pope, not the so-called greatest Christian who ever lived, deserves salvation. But, God loves us and wants to bring us into his family. Satan hates God and wants to keep us from joining God's family.

             Jimmy 

   

Swallow-Tailed Kite

    We planned to write about Peter Schweizer on China's exploitation of birthright citizenship - and how Christian language is used against us. But the truth is too disturbing. 

    So, we'll praise God's swallow-tailed kite (my favorite bird). 

    My bird book on the Florida's Everglades describes the kite as "loveliness of form, beauty of plumage patter, and graceful flight." I've seen one in the trees behind our Florida home and will never forget it. 

     "White feathers cover the bird's head and underparts. Black plumage with purple sheen clothes its back, it's long, narrow. pointed wings and its deeply forked tail." 

     "In flight, this hawk may soar high in the sky or swoop for a drink without pausing, it seizes prey with its talons and eats the food while flying. Its menu includes large insects, amphibians, small reptiles and nesting birds. The kite chooses tops of tall trees (as in our back yard) for nesting."

     "The female uses her talons to snatch large twigs and mosses for nest building. Spectacular flocks leave the park in August, flying to Central and South America." 

     There. Isn't that better reading than what the Chinese are doing to use nests for births in countries linked to America? To give them voting rights? 

         Jimmy