happy easter!!!

Happy Easter everyone!!!
I hope you have had a wonderful day! Ours was fabulous! We went to early service this morning with Don and Sandy. They had to get on the road right away so it was just Dan and me for lunch. And believe it or not, I cooked! That's right, a real Easter meal! Ok, but I must confess. The ham was one of the pre-cooked, pre-cut, pre-everything type of ham that only needed to be heated up. And the potato casserole was made by my sweet sister last week. She put it in the freezer before she left town and all I had to do was stick it in the oven. So basically a monkey could have made our Easter dinner. :) But, we loved it anyway! Youth was canceled so we spent the afternoon together. It's the first Sunday we've had in a long time to do that. We've forgotten what it's like.
I love this story Vernon, the pastor at my former church use to tell around Easter time. One morning, a Sunday school teacher told her students to take a plastic Easter egg, go outside and find something that reminded them of Easter to put inside. The children ran around the church property gathering their items. After they were all done, they came together to present their findings. One child had a piece of grass. She said Easter reminded her of spring time and of all the plants coming back to life. Another child had a pretty flower whose color matched her Easter dress. Finally, a little boy stood up and opened his egg. There was nothing inside. The teacher started to reprimand him for not following instructions. But he went on to explain that his egg was empty intentionally because when he thought about Easter, he was reminded of the empty tomb.
I think about that story every year. And it's true. The greatest part about Easter is that when the stone was rolled away, there was nothing there. Its emptiness brings us fullness. And it is only when we truly empty ourselves, just as Christ did, that we can truly know the fullness of life with Him. The lack of His presence in the grave means daily access to His presence for eternity. All I can say to that is woohoo and WOOHOO!!!

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned- for before the law was given, sin was in the world....But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of one man's sin; The judgement followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through one man, Jesus Christ."
Romans 5:12-17