It’s Easter morning or Resurrection Day.
The traditional greeting is, “He is risen” followed by a friend saying, “He is risen indeed.”
The two weeks leading up to Easter included two funerals. That would sound like a bummer unless you knew these two men.
But that’s the subject of today’s devotional. I really didn’t know these men as well as I thought.
I’d known the one man for over three decades and found out at his memorial service he was a true Renaissance Man. He never bragged about his gifts, but everyone who paid tribute at the service expressed a little something different that exemplified one or more of John’s talents.
The other gentleman sat right behind me in church and although we had several conversations over the past few years, it was at his funeral that I came to know he was a famous regional athlete in his own right. A three-letter man, he was a talented quarterback, a four-year basketball player and a flame-throwing baseball pitcher. He never talked about that.
I felt uneasy that I didn’t know these men better and that’s been a recurring theme throughout several funerals I’ve been to. I decided right then and there that I would endeavor to get to know people at church and in other areas of my life. So, during the memorial lunch following the service, I deliberately sat with five people I didn’t know well.
I won’t say that I interviewed them, but I will say that it was a start.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: It made me think of Jesus. I want to get to know him better, sit next to him and ask him more about himself. It’s funny, the more you get to know another, the more you know yourself.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3: 10,11