Day 39 of 40 Days to Passover and Resurrection Weekend

Plan on attending Easter services at your church. Invite someone to attend with you.

Dear Friends,

It’s Good Friday, and we have come to the end of our 40-day journey to Passover and Resurrection weekend.  Robin Howe and I wish we could express how we have enjoyed your traveling with us.  Your comments have encouraged us along the way, knowing that we have been focusing on Jesus as we walked together.  It is with much joy and some sorrow that this particular journey ends.

We have reached our destination, the days marked to celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

Today’s challenge is to make plans to attend services at your church this weekend and to invite someone to come with you.  So may I just give a plug for the church?

I think “church” has gotten some bad press over the years, the centuries.  Sometimes we expect everyone in the church house to be perfect saints.  People remark about the hypocrites in the church.  When a minister or a high official in the church “falls from grace” or is caught in some public sin, suddenly we are down on anyone and anything church related.

No doubt the “church” has done some pretty bad things in the name of Christ.  She has failed to fulfill her calling which is to love one another.

But the church is not a building or an institution or an enterprise.  It’s a body, a body of Christ-believers who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God.  The members of the body are not perfect or completely holy.  On the contrary, they are quite imperfect.  However, they are forgiven and they know how and why.  And that makes all the difference.

It is still the body fitly joined together to accomplish the purpose of telling God’s story, of revealing His love letter to people who have not yet understood. The personalities are different.  The gifts and talents are varied.  They are young and old and teenagers and children.  They are sometimes radical and sometimes conservative.  They have grey hair and streaked blond hair and even stand-up-straight-in-the-air hair.  They carry King James Version Bibles and New American Standards and The Message and The Living Translation.  They come from the east end wealthy and the down and out streets of the poor.  They come in all colors.

They have one bond in common.  They are brothers and sisters in Christ, are blood bought, and are striving to follow Jesus more and more each day with all of the heart, mind, soul, and strength.

The Bible says the world will know we are Christians by our love.  Yes, love will identify us.  It should identify us.  Not the way we dress or wear our hair, not the denomination on our membership card.  Not how large a Bible we carry or whether we are reading it from an app on our smart phone.

But we should be identified by our attitudes, our work ethic, our willingness to lend a hand, our ability to look past the flaws in others, our quickness to forgive, our love for every human being whether saint or sinner, our openness and giving spirit, and our passion to tell the world that Jesus is the answer to all of life’s problems and situations.

This would be the church in all her glory and perfection.  This would be Christ’s body moving and working in unity and love.

No, the church is not perfect yet.  But she is the best plan God had for spreading His good news.

Let us be the church and be about our Father’s business.

We have completed our 40-day journey.  Come visit us at PeggyWright.wordpress.com and IGetUpTooEarly.blogspot.com.  We would love to see you again soon.

If you would like to download a copy of the “40 Days to Passover and Resurrection Weekend, please do so.

40 days to Passover download