May Dear Friends

Dear Friends,

What a glorious Easter celebration it was, with a full church, beautiful flowers, and plenty of Alleluias!  Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! The good news is that Easter is not just a day, but a season. It is a 50-day period that begins on Easter Sunday and goes through Pentecost (June 9).  

It is a season for celebrating the promise of new life given by the risen Christ. It is a season for remembering the angel’s words to the women at the empty tomb:  “He is not here. He is risen.” It is a season for keeping our eyes open to see where we might find Jesus today.

I don’t spend a lot of time on facebook, but I did check my facebook page as I was working on my Easter sermon...you never know where inspiration will come, right?  I found a short video Tim Heavner ad shared with me and so I watched it. It was of a young boy who was putting twinkies in his backpack when his mom asked where he was going.  He said, “I’m going to the park to have twinkies with God.”

His mom said, “Ok, but be home for dinner.”  

The boy went to the park, sat down on a bench next to a homeless woman.  He offered her a twinkie. She smiled and then said thank you.

Together they ate twinkies, drank milk, talked and laughed.  

He said goodbye, and when he got home, his mom asked, “Well, did you find him?”  

The boy said, “Actually, God is a woman and she has the most wonderful smile.”  

The homeless woman went to join other homeless friends on a street corner asking people walking by for spare change, and they noticed she was smiling.  The other women asked her what she was so happy about. She said, “I just had twinkies in the park with God. He is much younger than I thought.”

It is a staged video, yes, but it made me wonder about real life examples of how we see God, if we open our eyes to the possibility that God can be found among the living in the world today--in the faces of people all around us.

God was revealed in Jesus.  In his life on earth, Jesus showed us that faith is stronger than fear, love is stronger than hate, and life is stronger than death.  

For the season of Easter, let’s be on the lookout for Jesus.  In the faces of people all around us.

In the people we know and love and in the strangers we pass on the streets, and even in the faces of our enemies.  We might have to look closely, but Jesus can surprise us.

Let’s keep our eyes and ears and hearts open, because you never know where we might find Jesus.  With the God of the resurrection, anything and all things are possible.

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Eastertide blessings,  

Pastor Donna