April 13 – “The Easter Squirrel??”

Easter Sunday.  It sure looked a lot different this year.  Oh, some things were similar.  Our alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. That pretty well matches up with prior years of sunrise services.  And I received a text at 5:30.  Actually, that wasn’t unusual either.  Someone generally has a question of some kind regarding the service.  This one, though, was from a friend of ours in New York.  The state, not the Big City.  She just wanted to wish us a Happy Easter.  Great to hear from you, Laura.

About 6:30 Chris and I went to the beach and did a Facebook Live broadcast at sunrise.  You’ll have to take my word for it that it was sunrise.  It was extremely cloudy and very windy.  Sound would have been a nightmare for a full-blown service on the beach.  Afterwards I listened to the video, and I could barely make out the words to the story I was reading because of the sound of the wind.  The best part about the whole experience, though, was hearing from several Seasiders who were actually at different parts of the beach at the same time.  Together, yet apart.

Next we stopped by a few houses and egged them.  Yep, you ready that right.  Actually that doesn’t mean what it did when I was a kid.  We didn’t take raw eggs and toss them at random houses.  Hey, eggs are a valuable commodity right now.  This kind of egging means we took some filled plastic eggs, hid them in the yard of some kids, and left a note explaining they had been egged.  No names.  Just. “You’ve been egged” and how many to look for.  One of the houses was Cailyn’s.  Of course her Mom and Dad have those new-fangled cameras, so they were alerted to the weird old people walking around in the yard.  They did keep the secret, though.  The funny thing there was what happened to two of the eggs.  One of them had a hole smashed into it.  The other was hidden way up in their oak tree.  Like … way up.  Like … “I don’t know how she found it” up.  Nathan sent us pictures of the hunt, and then asked, “How is this even possible!!???”  I know I didn’t climb up there.  I suppose it must have been the Easter Squirrel.

After the regular online streaming service we had another Easter chore ahead of us.  Oh, by the way, the broadcast went fairly well.  We did have two glitches, though.  Two of the song videos we had recorded just didn’t play for some reason.  They both worked before we started, but just didn’t come on for some reason.  One we just skipped over and I’ll include it next week.  The other, though was our major concluding song, “The Family of God.”  Couldn’t skip that.  Especially not after Chris went to all the trouble of grabbing the stuffed animal I had forgotten.  I have to have someone to hold hands with. 

OK, so the other chore.  We went out to Jamaica Beach to pick up lunch.  Way West Grill, the Jamaica Beach restaurant, has been providing lunches for neighborhood children every day.  Nice folks.  So, yesterday, their main menu items were boxed Easter lunches at a reasonable cost.  In the same spirit of giving they had already exhibited, they also gave away a lot of them to shut-in seniors and others who needed them.  The problem they were having, though was an unusual one.  Patrons who came by to pick up the give-away lunches weren’t letting them give them away.  Many of the people paid for two lunches and only took one.  It was an amazing expression of community.  I’m proud of all you West Enders.  Oh, and we saw no less than six Seasiders on that little ministry jaunt.  Hardest part of that was not getting to hug them. 

John 13:35 says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Father, thank you for the love we got to see yesterday in tangible … edible … ways.  Amen.