So I am not a guy that tends to cry alot, in fact it takes alot to make me cry. I would consider myself a pretty passionate and emotional type person, but not one that cries often or even gets teary eyed. But there is something about Easter time, palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday where I start tearing up like a little kid who lost thier dog. It happened to me again today in worship at Bell Shoals. I have been on the road since Dec. and this is one of my first Sundays back at my “home church”. It just happens to be Palm Sunday and so they went all out. People dressed in middle eastern biblical get-up, a real Jewish looking guy playing Jesus, lepers being healed, and palm branches being waved. As i watched and sang it was all i could do not to lose it. Why? It wasn’t necessarily the music or drama…although that was good. As I think about why i get like this during this time of year some reasons come to mind. These are thoughts that tend to run through my head during these days that make a grown man weepy…

• John 19 says Jesus was scourged. Bone, muscle and tendon ripped out of his back until he was unrecognizable.
• The gospels tell us Peter denied him 3 times…I have so many more times.
• Jesus was fully human, as well as divine. So he felt the pain and I can’t imagine what it was like to feel , and know you had the power to stop it all.
• He CHOSE the cross.
• I know the secret dark places of my heart…and so does he…yet while I was still a sinner Christ died for me
• 2 Cor. says Jesus knew no sin, and he BECAME sin, so that I could be righteous.
• I don’t deserve to be righteous, and he did not deserve to die.
• I can’t imagine having nails driven through my wrists and feet.
• I can’t imagine hanging naked on a cross for hours
• The gospels tell us, “why do you search for the living among the dead, he is not here, he is RISEN”
• The above words are some of the most beautiful and invigorating in scripture.
• Despite all of this I am like Paul. There are days i do what i do not want to do, and what i want to do I do not do.
• As I sat there today I thought of the billions who live in the world and have never heard this story….may we abandon comfort to go to them!

So what things move you about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ?