070403 Tuesday Breakfast - Prayer, Song and Testimony containing this weeks Steeple Article story.

At 14:40 minutes into this 31:51 minute recording of Dexter’s Tuesday Morning Prayer Breakfast one of our ladies testified to the lessons of her arthritic pain, which reveals the wisdom suffering in the midst joy of Easter based on Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of law.” The pain of Jesus Christ’s trial, suffering, rejection, death and burial lingered in the hearts and imagination of His followers even when the risen Savior confronted them in the Easter season before His ascension. The secrets of the LORD are still plentiful and the following Steeple article also refers to how children might experience “Easter blisters” as a similar miracle and mysterious secret of joy in the midst of pain.

Steeple Article - Easter Blisters
The first Easter morning was a time when the disciple women and men were running back and forth between their hiding places after Jesus’ trial, execution and death and the empty tomb. They must have run everywhere – at first wondering what was happening, then gradually wondering where they might meet the risen Savior before He ascended into heaven.
One of my childhood memories is running back and forth between my home and church (a span of less than one mile) on Easter morning, because I had first left home before the rest of my family out of excitement and discovered that I arrived before all other church members. I ran back to get my brother or another family member to come with me. I arrived later with my family in such a rush that I had forgotten to give my mother the flower I had prepared for her to wear. So I returned a third time by foot and ran to the church so that she would have the prized emblem of love from a loving son. I was wearing brand new Buster Brown shoes and the blisters on my feet were painful; but when I heard the preacher describe how the disciples ran everywhere, I knew this was part of what Easter was about.
If blisters could well up on a preachers tongue for relating scripture with confused delivery, then perhaps this would have happened in 1907 when Howard S. Bacon, a Methodist Episcopal pastor, experienced a backtracking tremor in the pulpit that rivaled my childhood Easter vigil:
It was Easter Sunday morning and Howard’s third Easter as a preacher. He stood before his congregation in Venice Center, N.Y., to read the Scripture lesson, as found in Matthew 28. When he came to verse 4, instead of the inspired words, “And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men,” he heard himself say, “And for fear of him the shakers did quake.” Appalled, he quickly proceeded to correct his mistake by solemnly declaring, “For fear of him the Quakers did shake and became as dead men.”
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for our blisters, confusion, stammering feet, and quaking tongues when we are confronted by Your Easter miracle of resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord from death and Your promise of our eternal life through Him. We confess our great surprise and astonishment at what You have done. We adore You, o God! We obey Your call to love as You love – through Your chosen one who lives in our hearts. Send us with blistered feet and stammering tongue to tell others. Bless us with hearing and knowing the Easter story as we know it to be our hope and promise of coming to You forever. All this we pray for ourselves and all Your creatures, in the blessed name of the Risen and Victorious Jesus Christ, Amen.