Good Friday

It's Good Friday.  It was good to be in church today.  It was good to be with family today.  I am tired.

I should have lots to write today.  Without Good Friday I would be lost.  I would have no hope.  If not for Jesus dying to give me life ....

However, Good Friday is a day when we think about death ... a horrible death.  Mary watched her son die.  She watched him struggle to breath.  She could not have understood, this side of Easter morning.

I'm a little sensitive to death these days.

We had a good day.  I think Josiah enjoys the music at church.  He and I left the sanctuary when he became fussy but I found a room in which someone was playing beautiful music on a keyboard.  I rocked Josiah in my arms.  This afternoon he had an extended period of happiness.  I just tickled him and tickled him and he just laughed and laughed and laughed.  Pure eruption of joy from his body.  A gift.

Isaac knows that Jesus died on the cross and he knows he is not still dead.  We're still teaching him the meaning of his death - to take the punishment for our sins, to enable us to live with him forever, so that in him we could be clothed in righteousness, to defeat death, ...

Christ is our victor.  Death has no more power.  In the words of John Donne:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

I'm looking forward to Easter.  Thank you for your prayers!

Blessings,

Elizabeth

1 Thessalonians 4:14

For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.