My Dear wonderful children,
As I was taking my walk this morning, I was thinking how good it is to be alive. We had a good day yesterday celebrating Easter Sunday. We went to church and Chris played some of the music. He did a wonderful job and he folks here really enjoy his music. He starts playing about half hour before the church service and many come early just to listen and sing along.
Gloria and Joe came over and joined us for dinner at the hall. Gloria is my next to the oldest sister and she has a home in the park next door. She spends about eight months in Florida every winter. Joe is a nice fellow. He has a hearing problem, which is too bad because he loves music and likes to play the piano.
Joe shared something with me several years ago that really blessed me. I had a problem with the church, with the ritual, pomp and ceremonies; I didn’t like them very well. I happened to mention it one day when I was talking with Joe and he said to me; “I like all of that, I really enjoy it. It brings the whole service alive.” He continued; “I love parades with all the ceremonies and the floats and music and the clowns. I think it is great. It does something for me, it stirs up my spirit and makes me feel good.”
Joe helped me to see something new. I took a new look at the church service and at parades. I saw they were important and that if we allow it, these special ceremonies can touch us in a very special way. They can help us get in touch with some wonderful things that happened in our past. I thank Joe for sharing that truth with me. I now see that somewhere in the past I was robbed. Now, that blessing has been restored to me.
My dear children watch carefully that you are not robbed of some very precious things. We have a lot of robbers and thieves and some of them are in our homes and churches. They are not even aware that they are robbers; but if they steal something valuable from you they are. You can also be a thief if you rob someone else.
What are some of the valuable things we can steal? For many years I lost the joy and spiritual blessing of ceremonies and parades. We also can be robbed of peace, joy, friends and things we enjoy doing because someone else does not want to do it.
Well because of Joe, I now enjoy ceremonies and parades. They are important in my life. Yesterday was Easter Sunday and I enjoyed it very much. The ceremonies reminded me of what Jesus did for me on the cross and all the years of my life. Last Sunday Pauline and I sang a song at church that we enjoy doing from time to time. The song we sang was “He touched Me.” Before we sang, I told the congregation the name of the song we were going to sing and asked the question; “How many of you can put up your hand to acknowledge the Lord has touched you.” The church was full and almost every hand went up. That was such a blessing to see that Jesus had touched all these lives.
Easter Sunday was such a blessing to me because it reminded me that the Son had risen. He had not only risen for me but for so many others as well.