Good afternoon FC,

The fish fry that had been planned for this Saturday night has been postponed. Pat and Ronnie think we will get rained out and that wouldn’t be much fun. We will announce the new time soon at our worship gathering.

We’re looking at the book of James this summer. Thanks to Michael for doing a superb job on the introduction. Life will go better if … The more you read James, the more you find its message showing up in everyday life. Funny how that works.

Persevere,
sd

Good morning FC,

Tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday! We will only have one service at 10:30 so come early for a good seat.

As the Apostle Paul seems to be saying, “No resurrection, no Christianity”:

If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it-if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ-sheer fabrications, if there’s no resurrection. If corpses can’t be raised, then Christ wasn’t, because he was indeed dead. And if Christ weren’t raised, then all you’re doing is wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever. It’s even worse for those who died hoping in Christ and resurrection, because they’re already in their graves. If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot. But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries. (1 Cor. 15:14-20, The Message)
As we remember the first Passion Week, today would be the day Jesus was still in the grave. But Sunday is coming!

sd

Fellowship is having three special services to celebrate Passion Week:

- Maundy Thursday (Commandment Thursday) – 7 pm @ worship center. Our worship will center around Jesus’ final night with his disciples in the upper room where he instituted the Lord’s Supper as part of the Passover celebration.

- Good Friday – 12 noon @ worship center. Jesus was on the cross from about noon until around 3 pm.

- Resurrection Sunday – come prepared to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

Also, There is a Passion Week overview listed on a previous post as a guide for your personal devotions this week. Our faith isn’t just about an idea or a concept or a feeling or a belief; it rests upon what Jesus did in history, and at the center of what he did you will find the cross and resurrection. What happened during this week long ago represents the very heart of the Christian faith.

sd

Good morning FC,

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday and the beginning of Passion Week. I’ve attached a guide to the week that we will talk about tomorrow briefly. Here is a thought from Dorothy Sayers about how God participated in suffering.

“For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is–limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death–he had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

We will again have on service tomorrow and next Sunday (Resurrection Day) at 10:30. We will also have a brief Maundy Thursday service and Good Friday service at FC. These will be short but meaningful times of remembering what our Lord endured for us.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8).

Why does He love us so much?

sd