Steps to the Mount of Olives 

As I stood on the steps leading from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives, it was as if Jesus was standing there by my side.  Tears came and trickled down my face as I realized that Jesus chose to walk down these steps and die for me and you.

 Jesus and his disciples had eaten their last Passover meal together and after he washed their feet,  he gave them some last words of encouragement and told them he was leaving them but would send them a helper, the Holy Spirit.  Judas had been sent away to betray him. After this, Jesus and His disciples left the upper room and walked the narrow streets of Jerusalem to the Gate in the eastern wall which is now called the Golden Gate and leads to the Mount of Olives. The disciples did not know this would be their last walk through these streets with Jesus in their midst.

These verses from John give us an account of these events. 

John 18

1When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.

2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. 3 So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.

4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6 When Jesus said, “I am he,”

They walked down the steps from Jerusalem, into the Kidron Valley, up the Mount of Olives to a garden named Gethsemane (oil press). This garden is in an olive grove and had been used by Jesus and His disciples often for a place of rest and prayer. John 18:1 describes the area as "over the ravine of the Kidron."

When Jesus left Jerusalem that night, he could have walked down these very stone steps . He had walked them many times before going  to pray to His Father in the garden or to leave the city. This time was different.  

As he stood on these steps, thinking about the hours ahead - the betrayal, arrest, beating, a mock trial, dragging the cross through the streets to Golgotha, the painful crucifixion and death - I am sure His heart was heavy and he was fearful of the coming days. He lifted His head, looked ahead and walked down these steps in acceptance of His Father's plan to bring salvation to the world.

Did he hesitate to take that first step down the steps?  Did he want to turn and go back through the gate into Jerusalem? Were the disciples pressing him from behind to walk down the steps not knowing what was to come?

Followed by his disciples, he slowly walked down the steps, across the Kidron Valley, and up to the Garden called Gethsemane. In Mark 14:32  it says “They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”

After telling His disciples to wait on Him, Jesus and 3 of His closest disciples went farther into the Garden. Jesus left them and went alone, knelt and began to pray to his Father for he  “began to be sorrowful and troubled” (Matthew 26:37). Mark adds He was greatly distressed and troubled and sorrowful “even to death” (Mark 14:34). He was distressed knowing that he would be tried, a crown of thorns pressed on his head, beaten with whips, and cruelly crucified on a cross. Being a man, he knew there would be hours of horrible pain and shame before he breathed his last breath.

 There  after hours of agonizing prayer and asking if it was possible that this bitter cup could be removed, Jesus accepted the cup he had to drink and gave himself to the soldiers to be arrested. He was tried by the religious court and the Roman court and was beaten, crown of thorns placed and pushed down on His head and sentenced to be crucified by the Roman court. Through all this pain and humiliation He never uttered a word in His defense - “like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7), 

A cross was placed on His shoulders and he was forced to walk the streets of Jerusalem  and outside the gate to the place of crucifixion.  It is called Golgotha  or the Place of the Skull. There He was crucified and died on that cruel cross for you and me.   

 

Praise God that this is not the end!  Jesus was taken down from the cross, wrapped in burial cloths, laid in a tomb and the tomb was sealed. A large contingent of soldiers was posted to guard the tomb in case His disciples tried to steal the body. BUT on the 3rd day, He arose and stepped out of the grave.  He is ALIVE and when we believe that He is the Son of God, and allow Him into our lives as Savior, we will one day go and live with Him for eternity.

These are simple, stone steps used by many through the years to traverse this valley but that night, they were steps of decision taken by Jesus to give His life for all who would accept his sacrifice and follow Him. It was a decision made because He loves you and me.   Will you take that first step and follow Him? Will you take that step of telling others about Jesus who can save them?  

These steps of decision are there for us and what will you do?

The Empty Tomb

 HE KNOWS MY NAME

I pray each of you have had a blessed and joyous Easter in the middle of a global pandemic.  It has surely been a historic day for we could not gather together in our churches but met online to sing and hear our pastors preach the Easter message using the Internet.  Different?  Yes, but could  see the faces of our beloved brothers and sisters in Christ in our minds as we worshipped our risen Lord.  

IT IS EASTER - OUR LORD IS ALIVE.  This is the foundation of our Christian faith for without the resurrection of Jesus, we would not have salvation.  Jesus gave himself to be crucified, which is a horrendous way to die, to pay for the sins of all people who have lived, are living, and will live until He returns to take us home. On the third day or the first day of the week He arose from the dead and lives forever in Heaven.  Hallelujah and praise His Name. 

In all four of the Gospels in the New Testament, there is the account of the day Jesus arose.  My favorite is  found in John 20:1-18 for it tells of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene.  He appeared first to a woman, which was most unusual in Biblical times.  Women were often not considered to be equal to men in that time but Jesus had broken that tradition several times in his ministry.  

Mary went to the tomb Sunday to prepare.the body of Jesus properly for he had been taken to the tomb hastily on Friday.  The body had to be removed from the cross and placed in the tomb before sunset and the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.  Not being able to go on the Saturday, the Sabbath, Mary hurried early on Sunday, the first day of the week, to place the burial spices in the burial linens which were wrapped around his body. She wanted to do this last service to Jesus as she was grieving for him. 

You can imagine Mary and the other 2 women’s surprise when they arrived at the tomb and found the stone which covered the entrance rolled aside, no body in the tomb, and two angels sitting there.  She ran to tell Peter and he and another disciple  went back to the tomb with her to discover she was telling the truth. There was no body, the body linens were folded on the stone ledge where the body had been placed.  Believing that the body had been removed, they hurried back to their homes for they were afraid they would be persecuted for following Jesus.

Mary stood outside the tomb, unmoving and bewildered and not understanding how the body could have been removed leaving the grave clothes folded neatly.  She fell to her knees and began to weep, looking back into the tomb to make sure it was empty, she saw two angels sitting on the burial ledge and they asked her why she was weeping?  They have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they took him.

Feeling the presence of someone, she turned and saw a man she thought was the gardener. He questioned her asking why she was weeping and who was she seeking?  He then said, “Mary”.  Instantly, when she heard her name, she knew it was the Lord standing in front of her.  

He knows our name!  He knows who we are!  He knows all about us, past, present and future.  If we have met Him, we are changed forever and we belong to Him.  We cannot meet Him, hear him call our name and stay the same.  We, like Mary, have to run and tell others that we have seen Jesus and you can see him too.  

Now He comes into our lives as the Holy Spirit and lives within us to guide us as we walk  the narrow path through this life.  He gives joy which no pandemic or any other disaster can take away .We know that He is in control of everything though we may not understand why He allows events like pandemics to occur.  What we do know is that He sees the whole picture and we see only the day in which we are living.  We trust Him and rest in the  assurance that whatever we have to endure God our Father walks with us and can use whatever happens to us to His glory.  

Yes this has been a unique Easter for us for most of us have spent it sheltered at home, worshipping by Internet, having Facetime or Skyping with beloved children and grandchildren, even observing the Lord’s Supper around our table with family.  Tomorrow we face staying at home, social distancing, communicating by phone or Internet but we know that He knows our name and we are His.  

If you don’t have this assurance, please message me and I will be glad to share how you can have this new life and be a new person with joy, peace and a wonderful life as a Child of God.  He knows my name! Praise His Name!!!

Frances 

The Empty Tomb 

EASTER 2020

Easter is coming and we are observing Holy Week!  The one week in the year when many in the world are observing the last week of Jesus’ life on earth or for our Jewish friends, Passover.  The whole world is aware that an extraordinary event happened many, many years ago.  

Many celebrate with Easter Egg hunts, beautiful Easter baskets, and family gatherings.  Mothers and grandmothers cook special, delicious meals with ham, deviled eggs, and other family favorites.  Eggs are boiled by the dozens, colored, decorated and placed in baskets for each child in the family along with candy, stuffed bunnies and always the marshmallow treats called Peeps.  It is and was for me a happy, family oriented time.

I was always practicing the weeks before for the special Easter music that would be sung  Easter Sunday or  Palm Sunday.  We would have spent countless hours for months learning the music, sometimes the drama, but always preparing for a special time of worshipping God with music about the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus.  It was always a special time for me for I love to sing praises to the Lord. 

Easter Sunday begins with Sunrise services to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and that He is alive.  Worship services pack the churches, with members and visitors dressed in their Easter best.  Music is joyous. Candles are lit, smiles are on every face and preachers preach the best sermon of the year.  We are all rejoicing that we have a Risen Lord who is now at the right hand of God the Father.  What a glorious time. 

However, this year will be different! 2020 will be the year which goes down in history as the year of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic!  Our entire world is being impacted by this deadly virus which is a flu that is mild to deadly.  There are over 1 million people who have contracted the virus, over 83,000 deaths, and over 300,000 recoveries.  It has swept the world and changed it for all time for we will never be the same.  We will note events as before, during or after the pandemic.  

Easter will surely be vastly different for most of us  because almost all churches are meeting online or drive-in.  Our preachers are preaching to empty pews, to a camera, being sent out by the Internet to our homes.  We sit with our families, in our own homes, with Bibles in our hands, participating in the singing and prayers, and worshipping our Lord.  We are missing that joyous interaction with our friends but it is worship and we are learning that the church is not a building but people who are bound together by believing in the Lord Jesus as our Savior.  We are the family of God, living in the Kingdom of God.  The church is here and now out in the world and not confined to a building and for this I praise God 

This year we won’t spend too much money on new clothes to wear to church, often to impress others. The big Easter Egg hunts are cancelled for we are supposed to be staying in our homes all the time. Families and friends will not have the blessing of gathering together for fear we could spread this virus.  Cooking a big meal and gathering together will have to wait for a while until this pandemic has gone away. 

Maybe we just need to cancel Easter.  NO WAY!  We still have the resurrection to celebrate for this changed the entire world for eternity.  Our Lord is not dead!  He is alive and is in heaven preparing an eternal home for his children.  He is also, through the Holy Spirit, guiding, teaching and protecting us from the world until we can be with Him for eternity.  At our appointed time, we will step from this earthly world into the heavenly realm to be with our Lord.  He will be waiting to greet us with open arms because his child is coming home! There we will live in that perfect and indescribably beautiful eternal home forever.  Hallelujah!

Easter will be different this year but we can make it memorable.  Spend this week reading and studying the Bible and I can suggest this site for help.  I am using it every day - https://tommykiker.wordpress.com/2020/04/03/passion-week-devotional-guide/.  Many of us have a special book we read each Easter and I hope you are reading it.  Sunday morning, gather with your family, your spouse, by yourself, or with your fur baby and go to your church’s online worship service. Have your Bible with you, pray and sing with the leaders, and listen to what God has to say to you through your pastor.  We can watch several services if we want to for we can watch services from other churches.  Be sure and begin with your own church for they need our support. 

No excuses this year - I don’t have a new dress, I don’t like the music or the preacher or some of those “hypocrites” who go to the church.  No one will see your clothes and you can find another church to watch and participate. If you don’t have a church, First Baptist Church Adel website will link you to the live feed and you will hear a good message from Bro. Ken Hall.   

I pray you will spend this week walking with Jesus to the cross and then celebrate His resurrection.  It will be different but it is important for us to remember that Jesus died for everyone and all you have to do is believe in Him as the Son God.  This link will carry you to a site which will walk with you through the plan of salvation  http://www.sbc.net/knowjesus/theplan.asp  You can always message me and I will be glad to help you.  

I wish each and every one of you a blessed Easter and stay safe.  Keep your distance and stay at home if at all possible.

 Frances

 Steps to Garden of Gethsemane 

Easter

Good morning and come on in. I know it has been awhile but had a brain-dead time period - didn't have anything to say, if you can believe that. Now, I am back, rested and full of stuff to talk about.

Speaking of dead brains, I ordered some supplements for us to take last week and when they came I was explaining to Roy what we had. I had several that are supposed to keep us up and moving and one that says brain enhancement. Very seriously, he looked at me and said, "What brain?" I think I responded after sputtering for a few minutes that maybe between the 2 of us we could find a whole one. My co-worker and I used to ask each other to remind us of something we had to do and we would say that maybe between our 2 half-brains put together, we could remember to remind each other. Sometimes it worked and a lot of the time it didn't.

Age has a way of cluttering our brains with lots of facts, fiction and junk which our thought processes have to navigate to find that one little fact we need. It's not that we don't have the information, it's just that we have to search the crowded brain cells to find it. It would be nice if we had delete buttons like a computer so that we could delete the unnecessary but we need to be sure and have a restore function to restore what we deleted and then discovered we needed it.

I love this time of year with the new green leaves, the flowers beginning to bloom, the plowed fields waiting to be planted and new life everywhere. We have planted some of our raised beds and I have more to plant today. This is a new experience for us for we haven't tried this method of gardening before and we will see how it works out. I think it will probably be overcrowded but we will see. I had rather have too much and have to pull some up than not have enough. That was our daddy's philosophy - plant too much and thin out the excess.

Easter is next weekend and when we were growing up it would have been a busy time at our home. Mama would be sewing frantically to make new outfits for the two of us and getting new clothes for the 2 boys. Many times the hems and buttons would added on Saturday night before Easter but they would always be ready and beautiful. She was a wonderful seamstress.

It would not end with the dress, for here in the South in the days of yore, we also had to have white gloves, a hat, and new shoes. The shoes were usually black patent for you can't wear white until after Memorial Day so I usually had black patent Mary Janes for years. After I outgrew those, it still was usually black patent something that we bought at Weatherbees or Liddells department stores there in Camden.

I loved Easter for it not only meant new clothes but dying the Easter eggs, a pretty basket and the Easter egg hunt. Thank goodness we had our own chickens which would lay lots of eggs for with 3 of us, we had to dye about 3 dozen eggs. We would have egg hunts at the church with our Sunday School class, sometimes one at school, and then our family hunt on Easter Sunday. Those poor eggs would be hidden, hunted, found, put back in the refrigerator, and hidden again. Most of the time we would die a fresh batch the Saturday night before Easter and mama would make deviled eggs for dinner and then egg salad, chicken salad and anything else which would use those eggs.

Mama's motto was waste not want not so the eggs would be used somehow for we carefully put them back in the ice box after hiding and hunting them if they didn't have any cracks. It they got cracked, we would shell them, put salt and pepper on them and eat them like candy for we liked boiled eggs. Sometimes the dye would have bled through and they would have colored streaks on the white but that just made them interesting.

Do you remember the Paas egg dyes? It would be a packet of colored tablets, a little wire loop with a handle you would bend up to hold the egg, a wax stick, and sheets of decals. You would boil the eggs, put the tablets in cups, add water and vinegar,and stir until the tablet melted. Then you would carefully place the egg in the little wire thingey or a spoon and slowly lower it into the dye and roll it around until it was dyed. After it was the color you wanted you placed them on clean dish towels to dry so you could wet them and put the little decals on them. If you wanted to be really fancy, you took the wax stick, write your name and a design on them before dyeing and that area would not dye and you had a personalized egg.

It was a big deal for me to make mine pretty and I would dye them 2 colors, put designs on them and then the decals. Sam would just dye his one color and be through but brother Arvin was a different story. After we had dyed ours and made them pretty, he would start pouring the different colors together and making new colors and take my word for it, red and blue and yellow and green mixed together is not a pretty color. Muddy is the best way to describe it but he thought is was hilarious but he always thought life was hilarious and was our sunshine and fun in our lives. Now he was full of devilment as mama would say, but he made life interesting.

By the time we had finished dyeing the eggs we would be red, yellow, blue and green and so would the kitchen table. Time for baths, hair washing, and off to bed so the Easter Bunny could come and bring us chocolate bunnies and yellow peeps. Our baskets would be waiting for us on the kitchen table all dressed up by mama after we were asleep. She and daddy always enjoyed surprising us on special days and I can see the grins on their faces now when our eyes would light up with joy. I miss them and Arvin too, but am so thankful for all the sweet and wonderful memories of growing up in my family - it was a blessing.

Well, I have rambled enough for this morning and ya'll be careful going home and come back to see me. I will share mama's deviled egg recipe with you this week for she made it with homemade mayonnaise and her pickles. Sooo good and easy.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach

Noah and Easter Basket

Good evening and ya'll come on into the Net Porch and sit a spell. The picture above is our great-grandson, with the keyword being great- inspecting an Easter egg. We died some eggs last week so we could an Easter egg hunt him while were in Camden. We also had some plastic eggs with candy inside to hide for him. He picked up a plastic egg, shook it, found the candy and then wasn't too thrilled with the real eggs. If they didn't rattle with promised goodies he didn't want to add it to the basket. Smart little boy! I don't blame him for I had much rather have candy than a boiled egg.

I pray you all are having a blessed Easter for it is a day of rejoicing. Our Lord died for us but was raised the 3rd day and lives in Heaven to intercede for us. Can we say "Amen?" This makes a difference in the way I live each day for I live with hope and faith in a Savior who is alive not dead and it makes me want to live life fully and joyfully. What a difference Easter makes in lives of those who have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our church was full this morning and it is so wonderful to sit in the choir loft and see all those wonderful people coming to celebrate and praise God. It was electrifying and I prayed for those who didn't know why we all were so joyous and full of praise for our Heavenly Father. It is probable that some were there because mama made them, they came to see if the Easter lilies were pretty, had a new outfit to show off or they wanted to fill their quota for church attendance for the year.

I hope none of these reasons were the reason you went to a worship service today but at least you were in worship. It you were not in church today to worship, guess what? We gather together every Sunday to praise and worship a living Lord not just on Christmas and Easter and you can begin next Sunday. It is good to be in the House of the Lord and praise Him with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We sang, He arose and is alive and it was wonderful to know we were singing the truth not just words. It was wonderful you can sing with us each Sunday.

One of the blessings of being a Christian is the big family we have. I marvel at the fact that I have brothers and sisters all over the world. We are the Family of God and the largest blessing of all is that it is open to anyone and everyone. Isn't it amazing that we are all joined together by our belief in a living and loving God who died for us but rose to live with our Heavenly Father for eternity. He is there waiting for us to recognize who He is and come to believe in Him. This is AMAZING.

I have opened my heart to you today and let you see the innermost part of it but it is the best part and the part which will live forever with all the saints. I pray if you don't have this relationship you will seek to find it for you will live a fuller life now as well as for eternity.

Now ya'll come back to see me and I'll have some sweet tea waiting on you for company is always welcome.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach