Easter is just around the corner!

It is hard to believe that Easter is almost here. As we talked about this past Sunday, Easter is very early this year and of course that means that we have to get ready extra early. This Sunday is Palm Sunday, which means that Good Friday and Easter Sunday are just about a week away (depending upon when you are reading this blog). I wanted to take a moment and give a few words of exhortation coming in to Easter.

First, I want to encourage everyone to take some time over the next couple of weeks to really focus in on what Easter is all about. This time of year provides many distractions that can keep us from focusing in on Easter. For instance, Spring Break starts this weekend and I know that many of you have plans for this week. Another distraction is the NCAA Tournament that has its opening round the same weekend as Easter. I am not saying that we can't enjoy Spring Break or the NCAA Tournament (I plan to fill out my bracket like normal). But Easter is a very important event each year in our lives and it is good for us to take some time to focus on the cross and remember Christ's sacrifice for us. I want to encourage all of us to not let the other things that are happening around Easter, keep us from experiencing God during that time.

For those of you who are parents, I also want to encourage you to make sure that you are helping your family focus in on what Easter is all about. As a family, we like to do devotions each evening (for the days or weeks leading in to Easter) that are based on Christ's sacrifice. We started two nights ago with a book called "Benjamin's Box." This book (along with others like it) use the "Resurrection Eggs" which are eggs that help you focus in on the Easter message with your children. If you don't want to do a book or use the eggs, you can always just spend time reading about the events in Jesus' life leading in to Easter. If you want other suggestions, please feel free to give me a call.

The last thing that I want to encourage us all about is the community-wide Good Friday Tenebrae service that we are going to have at Community Church of Columbus on Friday, March 21. The Tenebrae Service is a wonderful way to focus in on Christ's sacrifice for us and this year we also have the opportunity to do that along with other believers from the Church as a whole in Columbus. This is a great time to come together as "one Church" in our community and focus in on Christ's sacrifice. This is not a CCC event that we are planning to attend, it is a combined effort with 5 churches in our community and we had a major role in pulling this all together. We will have several people from our church involved in this service and I am hoping that we will also have several more in the congregation. The service is at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, March 21, at Community Church of Columbus. I hope that you can be there.

The times they are a-changing

That's right, it is time to change our clocks. This weekend we "Spring Ahead" to Daylight Savings Time. I know that many of you who have lived in Indiana for your whole life are still getting adjusted to this new idea of changing clocks instead of time zones, and I know some of you don't really like it, but regardless of whether we like it or not, it is still "time to change."

My only question is, why does the time change happen at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday night? Why Saturday? Why not Friday or Monday? And what is special about 2? Why not Midnight or 1? I think most of us probably change our clocks before we go to bed anyway. At least I hope we do, or else we might find ourselves being late for church on Sunday morning. And that gets us to one of the reasons for writing this blog. I wanted to remind us all that this is happening, so that we don't forget and find ourselves showing up for church an hour late. So please remember, before you go to bed on Saturday night, that it is "time to change."

So since we are springing ahead one hour, that means that we will have an extra hour of daylight in the evenings. Hence the name, "Daylight Savings Time." I know that it means that it will be a little bit darker when we get up in the morning, but think of all the wonderful daylight that will be available to us in the evening. And with that in mind, that brings me to my second reason for writing this blog. I have a great suggestion for us to make use of that extra hour of daylight in the evenings. Let's make it a point to get outside and connect with our neighbors. That extra hour of daylight in the evening means that when we get home from work there is still time to take a walk, or play with the kids in the front yard, or do some yardwork, or even just sit outside and read a book. And one of the things that I have found is that if we spend that time outside, many times we will find some of our neighbors doing the same thing. And it is a wonderful opportunity to connect with them.

As we talked about last week, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And in order to love them like that, we first need to have a relationship with them. So let's make it a point to use that extra hour of daylight to put ourselves in position to connect with our neighbors so that God can use us to love them.