Apture

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Easter celebrates new life...

Today I recognize and celebrate how Christ was raised from death. It is an appropriate time to look to the future and hope for new life which God can give.

This reminds me of how all cancer patients feel when they are finished with chemo. They feel they have been raised from the dead! They have new energy. They have new purpose. They have that look in their eyes which says, "I'm back".

I pray that everyone has a sense of that feeling this Easter day. Even if you have not gone through chemo, we all have issues and can experience hope for the future. I have hope for the future that I did not once have. I pray for healing in everyone this Easter.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.—Saved by his life.

“For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.—But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me.

Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

1 Pet. 1:3; Gen. 41:52; 2 Cor. 1:3-5; 1 Pet. 1:6, 7; 2 Tim. 4:17; 1 Pet. 4:19

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