Well, yesterday, Easter Sunday was very nice. I decided to get up EARLY and go to the sunrise service sponsored by the community clergy in Mars. It was outside (18 degrees). They said it was colder yesterday than on Christmas morning....burrrrr. Then there was a nice breakfast for the people who attended the service. Breakfast was inside the cafeteria of the Mars Home for Youth.
Dee and I then drove to Monongahela and picked up my mom and took her to her church for the 11 AM service. It was nice to see lots of people I knew from my youth. A couple of them I recognized right away. Most of them I vaguely remembered. A few come up to me and introduced themselves to me right away, others wanted to play "Guess my name." and then would comment "You don't remember me!?" The service was interesting. They tried to have a piano/organ duet accompaniment for most of the songs (as I've noticed in almost every church we've been in). This church added a little twist by having the mother of the pastor "lead" the hymns up front. Also, they attempted to use a large screen for announcements, words to the hymns. I felt they missed out on getting the most out of the screen with this captive audience. Although the pastor did start his sermon with a video clip of the resurrection scene from Mel Gibson movie about "The Passion of Christ." However, he just played it without any introduction. I wondered if most of the people recognized it or realized what it was from.
After that we went to the Curdies for Easter dinner. It was fabulous! The ham (my favorite meal) was superb, the scalloped potatoes and potato salad delicious, a jello salad with cream and stuff on top, and two kinds of dessert (ginger bread cake with hot lemon sauce, and a "grapefruit cake" with icing). It was nice to meet John's father, sister and brother-in-law (whose name was Casey) and John's neighbor Betty and to see their daughter Kristen again. The conversation was lively around the table and topics included among other things "stewardship practices of the churches represented around the table." A nice ending to the afternoon came when John indicated he was going to visit his mother in the hospital and that he'd be driving right past my mother's house. He offered to take her home thus saving us about an hour's driving time on the road. Both thoughtful and much appreciated.
Our evening ended with us working on the new puzzle and watching Monster's Inc. on TV. I love that movie. The animation is superb, and the plot line is fascinating... It seems that these fuzzy monsters have access to peoples homes through the bedroom closet doors. They scare people - mostly little kids - and then capture the scare energy and take it back to where the monsters live. The scare energy runs their universe. The problem is that children are becoming less and less scared of monsters. Thus creating a potential energy shortage for their world. The story ends with a new revolutionary discovery -- that their world can also be powered by "laugh energy." The monster's world is saved and they live on, only now making children laugh.
Certainly an appropriate theme for Easter. The saving of the world by a new form of energy - only we know that energy as "the love of God for a fallen world - in the form of Jesus' sacrifice, and the Father's forgiveness, grace and mercy."
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