Blog Church - Week 20

I'm Rev. JD, your online pastor, and this is Easter weekend.
Grab that hanky on your virtual pew. Wave the hanky if you feel so inclined.
Feel free to shout "Hallelujah!!" also, in addition, as well.
I'd like to talk very briefly about the traditional Easter story, then I want to draw out a lesson from the Easter message.

My sermon today is called "Look for a Mouse Hole."

Christmas and Easter are huge holidays, and both have their origins in Christ.
Both are celebrations of life.
One great thing about the Easter story is that death was not the end.
It turned out to be the beginning of a story that is unfolding even today.
On Good Friday, death was seemingly victorious.
But on Easter Sunday, Life sprung from the tomb and kicked the stuffing out of death!
(Now is a good time for shouting and hanky waving.)
Have you ever been in the middle of a bad dream, then your conscious mind comes in and makes the dream end well?
(If I'm the only one who's ever done this, then I'm feeling really weird here.)
Well, the Resurrection was God's way of changing a very bad ending into a good one.

Turn in your virtual Bibles to Hebrews 2:14-15:
"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death."

We can learn a lesson from the Easter message and apply it to our lives.
Here's the lesson:
A dead end doesn't mean much.
A dead end is where prayer and faith come in.
A dead end provides an opportunity for God to make a way.
You've heard the saying, "When God closes a door, He opens a window."
Well, I take that even farther.
When God closes a door, He sometimes closes all the windows too.
Life's circumstances just lead to dead ends sometimes.
That's just the way it is.
You can find yourself like C.S Lewis who wrote that in the past whenever he had knocked on God's door in prayer, God would always open the door. He never felt far from God. Later, when life dealt Lewis some faith-shaking blows, he began knocking on God's door only to hear locks being locked, one after another, as God seemingly bolted the door shut. It's that feeling we've all had like we're praying to a brick wall or feeling like our words never make it past the ceiling.
Are you THERE, God?!
Or like Jesus said on the cross, "My God! Why have you forsaken me?!!"
When we find ourselves in these difficult times, it's easy to give up all together. Fellow Christians might even advise us that the closed doors and windows mean that what we are striving for is not within God's plan for our lives.
In the case of C.S. Lewis, the door he'd always used was now closed to him. It was a long and hard road to seeing his faith restored.
Just before Jesus died, he uttered these powerful words, "It is finished!!"
He knew he'd made the sacrifice for sins, and he knew that Easter Sunday was coming.
He knew his death was NOT the end of the story.

My Easter message to you today is, don't quit or give up in the face of adversity or dead ends. If all the doors and windows are closed, then get on your hands and knees and LOOK FOR A MOUSE HOLE.
Are some dead ends permanent?
Sure.
But it ain't over, 'til it's over.
If you don't hear the corpulent woman singing, then keep your eyeballs peeled for a mouse hole!

And everybody said... AMEN!!!!

(Happy Easter, everyone! It's Thursday night as I post this. My mom is flying in on Friday morning and staying all weekend. I won't be blogging while she's here, but I will return visits to all of you on Monday and Tuesday.)