Happy Holy Week! “He is not here…He is Rizzzen”
Happy Holy Week, Friends! I pray this finds you in great anticipation of a Blessed Easter.
The below post is a reprise from last Easter. Its’ points are worth repeating. A couple of updates are necessary for you before you read this:
Our youngest son, Woody, is now almost twenty-two. He’s a senior at The University of Kentucky, will be graduating in May, and is getting married to his high school sweetheart, Lindsey-Taylor Thompson, in June!
I also talk about my five friends who became grandmothers to granddaughters. These little angels have now had their first birthdays and are even more precious than when I wrote about their births. One of them will become a big sister (!!!) in October!
And let’s not forget my dear friend, Liz Curtis Higgs, whose blog you’ll see I quoted from last year on the Women of Easter. This year she’s blogging on many different Proverbs, all of which will bless your socks off. (www.lizcurtishiggs.com)
I pray you’re able to sip a cup of coffee or tea while you read this and take time to savor our Savior and what He did for each and every one of us…Here we go!
“He is not here…He is Rizzzen…”
Don’t tell me children don’t learn a LOT at an early age! And watch out, THEY are watching YOU! And horror of all horrors: THEY will imitate you!!!
Our third-born son, named Woodford, a/k/a Woody, is a blast. He makes me laugh every time we’re together.
One Easter weekend, when Woody was two years old, we’d just returned home from church. Scurrying to get a meal on the table, we asked our oldest son to entertain the younger two boys. Thankfully this wasn’t the year before, which nearly did us in…
That particular year before, John and I chose to take two cars to church since the Easter Bunny’s arrival was postponed ‘til after church. (Don’t ask me how we explained that one.) “The Plan” was that I would hurry home, ahead of John, hide the eggs, and be ready for the boys.
Problem is, my husband tends to drive a tad speedier than yours truly, so I was barely ahead of them. Hurrying in heels isn’t a gift of mine either, so I was literally hurling eggs thru’ the air in the back yard. To top it off, my heels were sticking in the grass, and well, it’s a good thing none of our neighbors were within earshot.
Darned if John and the boys didn’t arrive while the eggs were flying thru’ the air. Our oldest son, John Jr., more astute than anyone needs to be, said, “Look Daddy! It’s raining Easter eggs!” Well, let’s just ADD to that big web of lies we’d already woven, throwing in one more far-fetched explanation.
Now while I know there’s not really a “time out chair” in Heaven, I still envision myself spending time there for some of these antics…So sorry, Lord. (Don’t you know He thinks we’re completely crazy sometimes?)
So back to the year Woody was two: The boys were playing upstairs and I ran up to get something. Woody was marching back and forth across the hall, while holding a big plastic telephone, just-a-chatterin’ away. (I’ve been known to walk thru’ the house while talking on the phone….hmmmm.)
Woody was shaking his head, back and forth, emphatically saying, “NO!”… pause, pause….”He is not here!” …LONGER pause….”He is RIZZZEN!”, prolonging the ‘s’ into buzzing ‘z’s!
That spectacular Easter Sunday, the Sunday school teachers were teaching the precious children about Jesus’ resurrection. As Liz Curtis Higgs said in her blog last week about the resurrection, “This truth changes EVERYTHING! His heavenly Father ‘has raised him to life’ (CEV). Hallelujah! God be praised! He who was dead is now alive forever!”… And even two year olds can begin absorbing this.
This Easter week, let’s celebrate TWO important points:
First, and foremost, let’s celebrate that the tomb is EMPTY! Christ indeed has risen!
An angel of the Lord announces to Mary Magdelene, Mary the Mother of James, and to Salome in Mark 16:6 “Don’t be alarmed…You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here…” (See also Matthew 28:6, Luke 24:6 and John 20:11-18.)
The Life Application Bible points out the importance of the resurrection by calling it “the KEY to the Christian faith.” Let’s look at 5 reasons WHY the resurrection is “vitally important.”
1 – “Jesus kept his promise to rise from the dead, so we can believe he will keep all his other promises.
2 – The resurrection ensures that the ruler of God’s eternal kingdom will be the living Christ, not just an idea, hope, or dream.
3 – Christ’s resurrection gives us the assurance that we also will be resurrected.
4 – The power of God that brought Christ’s body back from the dead is available to us to bring our morally and spiritually dead selves back to life so that we can change and grow.
5 – The resurrection provides the substance of the church’s witness to the world. We do not merely tell lessons from the life of a good teacher, we proclaim the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Don’t miss these truths held within the verbs in each of the above five points: we CAN BELIEVE…; we are ENSURED ; we are GIVEN THE ASSURANCE ; Resurrection power IS AVAILABLE to us; it PROVIDES THE SUBSTANCE so that we can PROCLAIM THE REALITY OF THE RESURRECTION….
Let’s take time this week, with Good Friday approaching and Easter Sunday on the horizon , to be still, to reflect on this resurrection power available to us, and perhaps pray about a friend or neighbor who needs to hear this GOOD NEWS.
Which brings me to the second point: Let’s all be ever watchful for ways to teach our children, or our grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, or neighbors, about the Lord and His powerful Word.
Remember, Woody was just two years old at Easter time that year, and he clearly “caught” the Scripture being taught. We mustn’t forget what little sponges these children are.
You won’t believe this, but in the past four months, I have five, yes FIVE, close friends (two of which are my sister-in-laws!) who have just been blessed with granddaughters! (Think pink! ) These are all strong-in-the-faith Christian women and I can hardly wait to see what these little angels will learn about God from their grandmothers.
Look at their beautiful names and please say a prayer for them and their families: Caroline, Maria, Lucie, Emmeline and Emerson. I suspect you, too, may know of a newborn to pray for! Pray for them and their parents to raise them up knowing the Lord.
One of my many sins over the years in attempting to raise these boys is I tend to compartmentalize my faith. I need this Scripture forever in the forefront of my mind: Deuteronomy 11:18-21 says,
“FIX these words of mine in your hearts and minds;
TIE them as symbols on your hands and
BIND them on your foreheads.
TEACH them to your children,
TALKING ABOUT them
…when you SIT AT HOME and
… when you WALK along the road,
…when you LIE DOWN
… and when you GET UP.
WRITE them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.” (NIV)
Now you can see what I’m emphasizing above….again the verbs: fix, tie, bind, teach, talk about when you sit, walk, lie down, get up, and write. Don’t miss the fact that IF we do these things there’s a promise…”so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land…”
I pray you and your families have a most blessed Easter and Spring (even tho’ it’s snowing as I type). May we all rejoice that “He is not here, He is risen!”
‘Til next time!
(This post is dedicated to our youngest whipper- snapper-son, Woodford Lee Hoagland. John and I are also forever grateful to the ministry of Campus Outreach on UK’s campus which has discipled Woody to focus on Christ, rather than chaos which we all know can come with college experiences. Checkout www.colexington.org for more information. I love Campus Outreach’s mission statement: “Glorifying God by Building Laborers on the Campus for the Lost World.” Amen. Happy Easter everyone!)
