Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Hallelujah!

After only four hours of sleep I managed to get up and ready for church on time! Praise the Lord! Thankfully I got a really good nap this afternoon/evening, and I'm not too sleepy at the moment.

The Easter service was just wonderful this morning! The music was powerful, and both services were packed! The overflow room was even being used to pipe the video for those who couldn't fit in the auditorium. From the choir loft it was just wonderful to see people worshiping during the praise/worship music time. We sang, "Up from the Grave He Arose" and "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" followed by the choir singing a new version of "Happy Day!" by Tim Hughes. (Linked is the artist's version while we did a choral arrangement.) We also sang this great praise chorus, "Revelation Song" by Kari Jobe. Todd Gaither, our interim minister of music, and two men in the choir finished the music time singing "Arise, My Love". Powerful!

The sermon was by one of our rotating interims, David Lawson, who gave a clear message of the Gospel and what Easter is all about. I had heard that Easter was originally a pagan holiday changed Christian, but did you know that is not true? It has always been a Christian holiday from the beginning. Only one person (I don't recall the name) ever said it was pagan, and this source had been known to spread other falsehoods as well. We also got to see a video of a woman in our church who was recently baptized give her testimony. It was really wonderful! Someone in the congregation during the first hour got saved also! Praise the Lord!

After church my parents joined us for lunch at our house. We had some really nice family time, we ate a lamb cake I made for the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and the kids dug into the Easter/Resurrection baskets, although they got to check them out after they awoke this morning.


Rebekah's basket: lamb, grape juice and animal crackers representing the wine and the bread, Easter stickers, chocolate cross, empty egg for the empty tomb, green grass for new life in Christ, promise seeds with Scripture (candy corn)


Joshua's basket: lamb, grape juice and animal crackers, Easter stickers, empty egg, green grass, promise seeds, and Cedarmont Kids Easter songs


Checking out their baskets




Darrin and I on our back porch in front of our beautiful dogwood. (We tried to do a family pic here, but the kids just wanted to run around!)


Family pic - the best we could get


The lamb cake - I ran out of frosting, I guess because I was too liberal starting out, and the perfectionism in me wanted to make more, but since it was already between 10:00 and 11:00 PM last night I opted not to run the mixer and risk waking everyone to make more icing.


Praise the Lord for sending His Son to die on a cross for our sin, but not only that, but He rose from the grave and He lives forever!!! Hallelujah! What a Savior!