Easter Weekend Reflections

Title: Easter Weekend Reflections

When I was a young boy my mom took me to Sunrise Services put on by our church, Grace Gospel Chapel.  We would go to a golf course (I think) right on Lake Erie before dawn.  I remember it was cold and dark but dawn came while we were singing.  The water far below lapped against the cliffs.  It probably was amazing but that’s not the part I remember very well.  We went back to the little church and a big breakfast with pancakes!   I loved it!  I remember the big breakfast!

When mom got remarried Bethel Baptist Church became our home church (I already attended their school, so it wasn’t a big change for me:) and they did Sunrise Service too.  There was no golf course BUT the first year dad took us they had Dunkin Donuts!!  I had two or three donuts at least!!  (I wouldn’t realize I was allergic to wheat until I was in my thirties)  That’s all they would have had to do year after year and I would have been there with bells on!! (which is an odd saying isn’t it.  I wonder where that came from? How do you wear bells?  Anway....)  The next year it was another church service with resurrection songs early in the morning with NO donuts!!  I was so disappointed!

The next big Sunrise Service I remember was at South Owego Bible Church with little Matthew (and maybe Adrianna?)  We were at Mom and Dad Card’s house and I think and Easter that year fell on Daylights savings time:(  Ugg!!!!  I just remember stumbling into church with tired kids.  Dad Card did a great job on breakfast but I was pretty tired:)  All I remember is wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

I got up for Sunrise Service at 5 am this year (about the usual time I get up these days) and found my youngest son already up.  I get coffee going and head down to the computer room to put up the morning Austinburg Facebook Update and to be prepared for morning services.  Soon I’m taking Gail coffee and getting ready to go.  A little after 6 I have woken up the bear and I’m heading out the door with Gail.  Matthew and Autumn will drive themselves to church... wow!  How time flies!  Briana White had a bridal shower the day before and had nice table clothes still on the tables.  That was nice:)  Gail is a whirlwind of motion and I just do little jobs for her.  Chip Baldwin (who had just been at the hospital with his mother) came blearily in the door.  “Did you get the heat already?” he asks.  I nod and apologize for not letting him know.  He hands me some packages of muffins and heads back out to his car. 

Pastor Todd comes down and greets both of us.  Pastor Todd is the head of our small rural church fellowship and a family friend.  Friends and young people from different churches show up filling up different areas of the church.  I miss Pastor Matt Terboss but I am glad his church has their own Sunrise event this morning.  The service is nice and the spread afterward is fantastic!  If I was a kid, I would have loved it!  What did Gail and the ladies have waiting?  Oh, my!  We had a juicy ham, cut in little strips, and boy was it good!  They had a crockpot full of sausage and loads of fruit.  More importantly they had all sorts of pastries set out with GF pastries!  Of course coffee was brewing in two pots and a big vat of hot water for tea or hot chocolate was there!  After most everyone left I went up to the nursery to review material and to catch a small nap:)  During the morning service I was preaching away (the Lord blessed there too because I thought the message was going to be a disaster but with HIS blessing it was great!) and I look over and see all the little kids hunting Resurrection Eggs!  (Actually, I think we called them Easter Eggs, but they had children’s church first and boy did they look like they were having fun!)  What a great day!!

Why do I celebrate Easter?  One of my favorite YouTube commentators called it “half a holiday.”  To be fair I don’t think he’s a Christian and he did quickly follow up with mentioning that here Christ dies for the world and here he say’s it is only half a holiday.  What he doesn’t understand is that for those of us that go to sunrise service, we die in the afternoon... or at least I do:)  This year my nap got interrupted by a nightmare.  I had a track meet coming up at JT and I hadn’t done any event sheets!  Yipe!  Worse, the meet was starting in thirty minutes and I was still at home looking for my clothes!  Wow, that was a bad dream!!  But, why do I celebrate Easter?  Is it because I’m a pastor and that’s my job?  No.  If I wasn’t a pastor I would still be in the Lord’s house on Easter (and all the other Sundays:)  Why then?  I believe that Jesus is the lamb of God who came to take away our sins (John 1:29).  I believe Jesus when he states, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).  Jesus isn’t just A sacrifice, he is THE sacrifice!  He created our world (John 1:3) and he maintains our world (Colossians 1:17).    But he didn’t stay dead, he rose from the grave (Matthew 28:6).  I serve a risen savior, he’s in the world today.  He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.  I see his hand of mercy and hear his voice of cheer and just the time I need him, he’s always near!  I have asked him to be my savior (John 1:12) and I have been born again (John 3:3). 

Why am I a Christian author?  Is it because I couldn’t hack it as a secular author?  Well, I don’t know if I would have “made it” as a secular author but I like to write stories and yes, there are a few secular stories I would have liked to write.  I thought Star Trek Voyager had an incredible premise but I felt they botched it.  (If you are a fan, I’m not saying it is a bad show, only that it could have been much better!)  Instead of a middle aged, totally confident female Captain, I would have had more of a James T Kirk female, younger and inexperienced but plucky!  I would have had the resistance movement they were chasing be more like pirates with a rogue as their leader who was older than the captain by twenty years at least.  Clean cut Star Fleet and a bunch of space rogues might have made for a VERY interesting series.  (Yes, I know in Trek the Marguis are clean cut, relatively moral, Star Fleet wanabees, but these guys and girls could have been human mercenaries or a more hard core group of resistance fighters.)  In the show Voyager the Star Fleet and Marguis become one ship relatively quickly with only a few speed bumps.  I would have changed all that.  From a loyal second officer who backs the captain, I would have had a Han Solo type guy or someone you kept your eyes on at all times.  I would have had them resist putting on Star Fleet uniforms for at least two seasons.  I would have the Captain and her by the book crew at odds with the space rogues constantly.  Eventually the two sides would become friends and then a crew under the Captain.  But that would have been a long road with a mutiny that almost worked and the pirate captain in the brig for awhile, along the way.  “You have a lot of passion for that story,” you might say.  “Boy, do I ever,” I reply with a smile.  Even now my hands twitch with the desire to write the huge novel even if just for myself!  Why don’t you?  Because I only have so long on this earth and my desire is to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ.  The only reason I would write such a story is to call attention to my Christian novels through a new fan base but... I’m still not sold that the Lord wants me to write such a thing.  It’s okay, I have plenty of Christian things to write that I am very excited about!!

*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***