"Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,
Robed in the blooming garb of spring;
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
Who makes the woeful heart to sing."
Jesus is beautiful. He is mighty. He is merciful. He is purer. He is fairer. All honor, glory, and praises be unto Him. Praise the Lord for the way He imparts to us His abiding peace and He sends upon us His sweet rest and sleep. I was gazing through our picture window this morning, looking at Eastern sky. . . it looks brilliant. How the Lord awaken the earth with the gift of a brand new day pregnant with His tender mercies and loving kindness. We will never lose when we are walking in His light paved with grace. (Indeed, it is a wonderful life in Christ , because of Christ, and through Christ). In our evening walks we have been gazing at crocuses with brilliant purple color in full bloom. The trees are budding. The spring birds are driven to unspeakable songs of joy. People are sapping the maple trees, getting ready for the Maple Festival that starts this Saturday, April 1, continuing into Sunday. The Sugar Shack in town is full of activities. When you walk by it you will get lost in the sweet aroma of it all.
Praise the Lord the way he takes our bitterness of life and turns it into the sweet, sweeter that honeycomb. The wonderful and Gracious family with whom we stayed during our last visit to Boston are committed and zealous Christians involved in the ongoing ministry and mission of the Church. The woman was raised in a Congregational church in New England.
From my readings I had gathered that The New England Congregational churches had no stained glass windows. Rather, they all had clear glass windows. Every Congregational church had a cemetery next door to the church. On a given Sunday the preacher standing at the pulpit could see vividly the church cemetery through the clear glass windows. The worshippers also could see the cemetery from the sanctuary through the clear glass windows. Modern people may find church graveyards disturbing. A drive through the country is likely to reveal a church building with a graveyard situated uncomfortably close, leaving a feeling of awkwardness or morbidity—giving at least the impression of poor planning.
The church graveyard, though, was placed there on purpose for church members. The church graveyard has a way of saying, “Each one buried here was one of us, and they all will be one of us on resurrection day.” Life together, death together, resurrection together: the church graveyard is an expression of church membership.
We don’t think this way anymore, because we don’t think about resurrection anymore, perhaps because we don’t think much about death anymore. It wasn’t long ago when life expectancy only reached into the forties. Coming down with a fever was truly frightening; measles and whooping cough killed children; childbearing killed women. In those days, people thought more about death than we do now. Now death is a long way off, some time after retirement, the beach house, and the BMW. So death—and with it resurrection—are pushed to the backs of our minds and then to the back of our theology.
However, resurrection is our Hope.. Resurrection is our foundation. There was a nursery rhyme that said, "Ashes, Ashes, we fall down. . . Easter, Easter we all rise up." "For all have sinned and have fallen short of the Glory of God. . . For the wages of sin is death (but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord)." Resurrection is Christianity’s unique, audacious claim—so unique and bold that it’s dangerous. Preaching resurrection landed the early church in a lot of hot water.
Paul was emphatic when he said, “I made known to you, brothers, the gospel I preached to you.” This gospel is the very reason for the Christian’s existence. John Hick was a pluralist philosopher. He embraced the idea that although they disagree on much, the major religions of the world are, in fact, essentially the same. To make this work, Hick reduced all religious experience to one thing: The essence of religious experience is to be free from selfishness by being grounded in the real—whatever that is.
Paul claimed to have the real. He declared that: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with Scripture, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with Scripture, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the 12." Paul pressed the reality of these facts. In a way, John Hick is right: You must be rooted in reality. That is where his correct assumptions ended, because that reality is the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Paul further said, “If Jesus didn’t rise, then pity us like fools, because we have nothing.” If we have nothing without a resurrection, what do we have with it? The reality of future resurrection Is the finishing of our salvation. If Christ was raised from the dead, then all who are in Him also will rise in like manner. It’s audacious and awesome. Without the resurrection, we have nothing. With it, we have everything.
Praise the Lord for the sure and certain promise of Resurrection. During a funeral service we declare, "the sure and certain Hope of Resurrection". Sin, death and hell make it a matter of extreme urgency. Let us not limit ourselves to walking through a springtime ritual, but go all in with a risen Savior. He died our death and then conquered our grave. Let us keep on trusting . Him. A familiar verse rings so true: "For God so loved that world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
In Jesus our Lord ,
Brown
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