It's been some time since I've made it to the blog. . .weighed down with many pressing things, I hope to keep some record of our family times over the past month! We've enjoyed a trip to the beach, working around the house, visitors, field trips. . .
But you can't celebrate Easter without acknowledging that Jesus is Alive! So, a week later, be encouraged - He is alive.
"Bought with a Price" by CH Spurgeon
"If I had the power to do it, how would I seek to refresh in your souls a sense of this fact that you are 'bought with a price.' There in the midnight hour, amidst the olives of Gethsemane, kneels Immanuel the Son of God; He groans, He pleads in prayer, He wrestles; see the beady drops stand on His brow, drops of sweat, but not of such sweat as pours from men when they earn the bread of life, but the sweat of Him who is procuring life itself for us. It is blood, it is crimson blood; great gouts of it are falling to the ground. O soul, thy Savior speaks to thee from out Gethsemane this hour, and He says: 'Here and thus I bought thee with a price.' Come, stand and view Him in the agony of the olive garden, and understand at what a cost He procured thy deliverance. Track Him in all His path of shame and sorrow till you see Him on the Pavement; mark how they bind His hands and fasten Him to the whipping post; see, they bring the scourges and the cruel Roman whips; they tear His flesh; the ploughers make deep furrows on His blessed body, and the blood gushes forth in streams, while rivulets from His temples, where the crown of thorns has pierced them, join to swell the purple stream. From beneath the scourges speaks to you with accents soft and low, and He says, 'My child, it is here and thus I bought thee with a price.' But see Him on the cross itself when the consummation of all has come; His hands and feet are fountains of blood, His soul is full of anguish even to heartbreak; and there, ere the soldier pierces with a spear His side, bowing down He whispers to thee and to me, 'It was here and thus, I bought thee with a price.' O by Gethsemane, by Golgotha, by every sacred name collected with the passion of our Lord, by sponge and vinegar, and nail and spear, and everything collected with the passion of our Lord, increased the anguish of His death, I conjure you, my beloved brethren, to remember that ye were 'bought with a price,' and 'are not your own.' I push you to this; you either were or were not so bought; if you were, it is the grand fact of your life; if you were, it is the greatest fact that ever will occur to you; let it operate upon you, let it dominate your entire nature, let it govern your body, your soul, your spirit, and from this day let it be said of you not only that you are a man, a man of good morals, and respectable conduct, but this, above all things, that you are a man filled with love to Him who bought you, a man who lives for Christ, and knows no other passion. Would God that redemption would become the paramount influence, the lord of our soul, and dictator of our being; then were we indeed true to our obligations: short of this we are not what love and justice both demand."
One of my favorite Easter memories . . . as a newlywed far from home I would hold the phone up to the record player and blast Don Francisco's He's Alive to my brothers. Hopefully early! This one's for Jon and Tim, brothers of flesh but brothers eternal. HE IS ALIVE!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8yQ1I4Wofc
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