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An Easter Story

The story below is from the URL: http://www.fathershands.com/emptyegg/

Jeremy was born with a twisted body and a slow mind.

At the age of 12 he was still in second grade, seemingly unable to learn. His teacher, Doris Miller, often became exasperated with him. He would squirm in his seat, drool, and make grunting noises.

At other times, he spoke clearly and distinctly, as if a spot of light had penetrated the darkness of his brain.

Most of the time, however, Jeremy just irritated his teacher.

One day she called his parents and asked them to come in for a consultation. As the Forresters entered the empty classroom, Doris said to them, "Jeremy really belongs in a special school. It isn't fair to him to be with younger children who don't have learning problems. Why, there is a five year gap between his age and that of the other students."

Mrs. Forrester cried softly into a tissue, while her husband spoke. "Miss Miller," he said, "there is no school of that kind nearby. It would be a terrible shock for Jeremy if we had to take him out of this school. We know he really likes it here." Doris sat for a long time after they had left, staring at the snow outside the window. Its coldness seemed to seep into her soul. She wanted to sympathize with the Forresters. After all, their only child had a terminal illness. But it wasn't fair to keep him in her class. She had 18 other youngsters to teach, and Jeremy was a distraction. Furthermore, he would never learn to read and write. Why waste any more time trying?

As she pondered the situation, guilt washed over her. Here I am complaining when my problems are nothing compared to that poor family, she thought. Lord, please help me to be more patient with Jeremy.

From that day on, she tried hard to ignore Jeremy's noises and his blank stares. Then one day, he limped to her desk, dragging his bad leg behind him.

"I love you, Miss Miller," he exclaimed, loud enough for the whole class to hear. The other students snickered, and Doris' face turned red. She stammered ... "Wh-why that's very nice, Jeremy. N-now please take your seat."

Spring came, and the children talked excitedly about the coming of Easter. Doris told them the story of Jesus, and then to emphasize the idea of new life springing forth, she gave each of the children a large plastic egg. "Now," she said to them, "I want you to take this home and bring it back tomorrow with something inside that shows new life. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Miss Miller," the children responded enthusiastically ... all except for Jeremy. He listened intently; his eyes never left her face. He did not even make his usual noises. Had he understood what she had said about Jesus' death and resurrection? Did he understand the assignment? Perhaps she should call his parents and explain the project to them.

That evening, Doris' kitchen sink stopped up. She called the landlord and waited an hour for him to come by and unclog it. After that, she still had to shop for groceries, iron a blouse, and prepare a vocabulary test for the next day. She completely forgot about phoning Jeremy's parents.

The next morning, 19 children came to school, laughing and talking as they placed their eggs in the large wicker basket on Miss Miller's desk.

After they completed their math lesson, it was time to open the eggs. In the first egg, Doris found a flower.

"Oh yes, a flower is certainly a sign of new life," she said.
"When plants peek through the ground, we know that spring is here."

A small girl in the first row waved her arm.
"That's my egg, Miss Miller," she called out.

The next egg contained a plastic butterfly which looked very real.

Doris held it up. "We all know that a caterpillar changes and grows into a beautiful butterfly.
Yes, that's new life, too."

Little Judy smiled proudly and said,
"Miss Miller, that one is mine."

Next, Doris found a rock with moss on it.

She explained that moss, too, showed life.

Billy spoke up from the back of the classroom "My daddy
helped me," he beamed.

Then Doris opened the fourth egg.
She gasped.

The egg was empty.

Surely it must be Jeremy's she thought, and of course, he did not understand her instructions. If only she had not forgotten to phone his parents.

Because she did not want to embarrass him,
she quietly set the egg aside and reached for another.

Suddenly, Jeremy spoke up.
"Miss Miller, aren't you going to talk about my egg?"

Flustered, Doris replied, "But Jeremy, your egg is empty."

He looked into her eyes and said softly ...
"Yes, but Jesus' tomb was empty, too."

Time stopped.

When she could speak again, Doris asked him,
"Do you know why the tomb was empty?"

"Oh, yes," Jeremy said, "Jesus was killed and put in there.
Then His Father raised Him up."

The recess bell rang.
While the children excitedly ran out to the school yard ...
Doris cried.
The cold inside her melted completely away.

Three months later, Jeremy died.
Those who paid their respects at the mortuary were surprised to see 19 eggs on top of his casket ... all of them empty.

Paid In Full

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
(Joh 19:30 NIV)

The phrase "It is finished" is the one word in Greek called tetelestai...... it also gives the meaning of "paid in full".

The tense of this verb is important to us -- perfect tense (tetelestai). In Greek the perfect tense signifies a past action, the effect of which continues into the present. It has been completed and is still complete. The effect of the tense in this verb is a sense of finality.

Moulton and Milligan pored over many of these receipts and contracts to better understand New Testament Greek. They observed that receipts are often introduced by the phrase tetelestai, usually written in an abbreviated manner indicating that the bill had been paid in full.55 The obligation has been completed. The debt has been paid off. Tetelestai -- it is finished.

Read an excerpt about tetelestai:

Was, Is And Always Will Be

Tetelestai comes from the verb teleo, which means “to bring to an end, to complete, to accomplish.” It’s a crucial word because it signifies the successful end to a particular course of action. It’s the word you would use when you climb to the peak of Mt. Everest; it’s the word you would use when you turn in the final copy of your dissertation; it’s the word you would use when you make the final payment on your new car; it’s the word you use when you cross the finish line of your first 10K run. The word means more than just “I survived.” It means “I did exactly what I set out to do.”

But there’s more here than the verb itself. Tetelestai is in the perfect tense in Greek. That’s significant because the perfect tense speaks of an action which has been completed in the past with results continuing into the present. It’s different from the past tense which looks back to an event and says, “This happened.” The perfect tense adds the idea that “This happened and it is still in effect today.”

When Jesus cried out “It is finished,” he meant “It was finished in the past, it is still finished in the present and it will remain finished in the future.”

Note one other fact. He did not say, “I am finished,” for that would imply that he died defeated and exhausted. Rather, he cried out “It is finished,” meaning “I successfully completed the work I came to do.”

Tetelestai, then, is the Savior’s final cry of victory. When he died, he left no unfinished business behind. When he said, “It is finished,” he was speaking the truth........

Matthew Henry expands on what Christ’s death accomplished in four statements, each one beginning with the letter F. The death of Christ provided a . . .

A. Full satisfaction for sin
B. Fatal blow to Satan
C. Fountain of grace opened that will flow forever
D. Foundation of peace laid that will last forever

.......there is more to the meaning of tetelestai. It means all of the above, but it especially applies to the price paid for the sins of the world. Merrill Tenney (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, IX, 185) notes that the verb

was used in the first and second centuries in the sense of “fulfilling” or “paying” a debt and often appeared in receipts. “It is finished” (Tetelestai) could be interpreted as “Paid in full.”

“Paid in full” means that once a thing is paid for, you never have to pay for it again. In fact, “paid in full” means that once a thing is paid for, it is foolish to try to pay for it again.

President's inauguration Invocation by Rick Warren

Almighty God, Our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of You alone. It all comes from You, it all belongs to You, it all exists for Your glory. History is your story. The Scripture tells us, ‘Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one’ and You are the compassionate and merciful one and You are loving to everyone You have made.

Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 43rd time, we celebrate a hinge-point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the united states. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a a son of an African Immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.

Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet and every one of our freely elected leaders.

Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans. United not by race or religion or by blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us.

When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us. And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ.

Help us to share, to serve and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet. And may we never forget that one day, all nations, all people will stand accountable before You. We now commit our new president and his wife Michelle and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, Esa, Jesus, Jesus—who taught us to pray:

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Younger Unchurched Seek Faith that Challenges, Transforms

These interesting facts are excerpted from a post in Christian Post online portal. Click here to access.

Younger Unchurched Seek Faith that Challenges, Transforms

While surveys continue to paint a hopeless picture of young adults and the future of the Christian faith, Christianity will not die out in this generation or any other, insists one researcher and author.

"We have heard them and guess you have too: 'This will be the last Christian generation,' 'Only 4 percent of this generation are Christians,' and 'The sky is falling,'" writes Ed Stetzer in Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them. "Well, there are some concerns (and big ones at that), but hype does not help."

The latest research to sound the alarm on this generation is last month's Barna Group survey which showed that less than one percent of those between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a biblical worldview (which includes believing that absolute moral truth exists, that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches, and that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven through good works).

Over the past three years, Stetzer – who serves as the director of LifeWay Research – has been studying and interviewing "unchurched" young adults in their twenties. The unchurched includes those who have never attended church and those who only attended as a child.

Ultimately, he found a generation that "is still excited about being spiritual but has lost its appreciation of the value of the church," he told The Christian Post. Some see the church as more of the problem than the solution to spiritual growth, he noted.

According to surveys conducted by the Center for Missional Research at the North American Misison Board and LifeWay Research, 80 percent of 20- to 29-year-olds believe God exists and 73 percent consider themselves to be spiritual and are interested in knowing more about God. At the same time, 67 percent believe the church is full of hypocrites, 77 percent think Christianity today is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people, and 90 percent say they can have a good relationship with God without being involved in a church.

Open to Jesus and God yet wary of the church, these twenty-somethings are seeking genuine relationships and a faith that challenges and transforms.

"They want a faith that changes them and changes the world," Stetzer commented. "That's what the Gospel truly is."

"Sadly many people have identified this generation as disinterested in a deeper approach to life," Stetzer writes in the book he co-authored with Richie Stanley and Jason Hayes.

The inaccurate stereotypes have led many churches to take the wrong approach when reaching the younger generation, such as offering little biblical depth in teachings.

In Lost and Found, Stetzer notes that more twenty- and thirty-somethings are leaving churches that model after sitcoms in which a sermon is presented with a clever story, a problem is introduced and then "neatly" resolved in a 30-minute time span. "Sitcom content makes the assumption that things can be resolved at the end of church," Stetzer writes. "Unfortunately content of that nature does nothing to embrace the mysterious nature of either God or life. Life is not a sitcom, and the real problems people experience involve deep struggle and introspection.

"Life isn't that clean and all of its challenges certainly can't be resolve in thirty minutes or less."

Turned off by neat and pat answers and hungry for depth, young adults are flocking more toward churches that are offering deeper and more meaty messages (particularly through expository teaching) and tackling tough questions even though they might not be able to give all the answers.

"We need to teach people that the Christian life is not always explainable but it is always livable," Stetzer commented. ...............more................



Written by:
Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter

Popular Opinions of Jesus

I found this in an article from Leadership University, on Popular Opinions of Jesus Christ.
Just to highlight some opinions that interest me. The entire article can be read by clicking on the link above:

C.S. Lewis
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Mahatma Gandhi
“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”

The Koran
“That they said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah’; but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.” (Koran, Surah 4:157, Yusuf Ali translation)

Thomas Jefferson
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.” (In a letter to John Adams, 4/11/1823)

Barack Obama
“I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn't 'fall out in church' as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn't want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.” (In an interview with Sarah Pulliam and Ted Olsen of Christianity Today (1/23/08)


The Dalai Lama
"Jesus Christ also lived previous lives," he said. "So, you see, he reached a high state, either as a Bodhisattva, or an enlightened person, through Buddhist practice or something like that. Then, at a certain period, certain era, he appeared as a new master, and then because of circumstances, he taught certain views different from Buddhism, but he also taught the same religious values as I mentioned earlier: Be patient, tolerant, compassionate. This is, you see, the real message in order to become a better human being." (In an interview with James A. Beverley of CanadianChristianity.com, “Comment: Buddhism's guru”, 4/16/04.)

Brad Pitt
"I didn't understand this idea of a God who says, 'You have to acknowledge me. You have to say that I'm the best, and then I'll give you eternal happiness. If you won't, then you don't get it!' It seemed to be about ego. I can't see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.” (In an interview with US Magazine on why he turned away from his Southern Baptist upbringing, “Why Brad Turned Away From Religion”, 10/07/07)

Augustine of Hippo
“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them: ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden.’”

Blaise Pascal
“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.”

Medical Aspects of Jesus' Crucifixion

Good Friday is good only because of the sure hope of Easter Sunday; otherwise, Good Friday, by itself, would have been one of the darkest darkest Fridays in all history when men crucified the Son of God on the cross.

There is an article published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) titled "On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ" for you to read. [Citation: Edwards WD, Gabel WJ, Hosmer FE. On the physical death of Jesus Christ. JAMA. 1986 Mar 21;255(11):1455-63.]

To access the article, click here.

It is not a theological treatise; rather it describes purely on the medical aspects of the flogging/scourging and the crucifixion. It is quite technical with medical terminologies but I believe you should at least be able to understand part of it, if not everything.

In that article, we will understand:
1. the pain and bleeding inflicted during flogging
2. why the nails were probably driven through the wrist, and not the fleshy part of the palms as depicted in many paintings
3. why asphyxia or suffocation is one of the main causes of death during crucifixion
4. why the Roman soldiers had to break the criminals' legs hanged on the cross and why, when it came to Jesus, they did not break Jesus' legs
5. what could possibly be the blood and water that gushed out when the soldier pierced a side wound on Jesus
6. what was the purpose of that drink of wine mixed with myrrh offered to the criminals

By a deeper understanding of the excruciating pain (the word "excruciating" in fact, comes the Latin word "excruciatus", from the root word that forms crucifixion) that Jesus went through, we would be able to appreciate better the extent of the sacrifice and love that God has for us.

I don't think anyone will be able to understand fully the extent of the love of God; but at least we would understand and appreciate better His love for us and in return, we would fall in love all over again with our God!

Lastly, in that article, it is also mentioned that it was customary for the condemned man to carry his own cross from the flogging site to the crucifixion site. Ever wonder why Jesus said in Matthew 16:24 (GNB)

"If any of you want to come with me, you must forget yourself, carry your cross, and follow me."?