Notes for 2 PM Service Brewster House (Homer NY)

Easter Sunday Mar, 26, 1989

Margaret M Cramer

Happy Easter afternoon!

I hope you will bear with me as I try to bring each of us --- a sense of
happiness that Christ does live today.

Hymn 14 Christ the Lord is Risen Today

Reading from big book p.65 Be a Hoper

Way back in 1928-1930 in So Philly PA, I was in a training school for

girls who wanted to be Religious Educators either at Home or Abroad. The
motto was stressed I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me in short not I,
but Christ.
Through the years, I recall He lives for us, and in us, when we let Him rise
and live in our minds and hearts. But we have to have faith.

Hymn 21 Faith of Our Fathers

Our Fathers did have faith they recorded it in Scripture Matt.29:1-

10 and 16-20.
This last week when [eople were seeming to almost celebrate the cruel
things they did to Christ has been a hard one for me as always. I try to
skip remembering and feeling that people are still crucifying Him every day
as sin is so rampant.
But then those dear, humble Salvation Army came round to our rooms
and besides the gifts of flowers in these hand-crafted little vases, they left a
bookmark with this message on it to help me curb my resentments!

In the Garden

Our lives have changed, to cause us to come here: in the late winter,
when life is dull. I can't go any more to my back door and cut off a few
branches of dead looking Forsythia and bring them in to put in water and
watch the lovely yellow blossoms appear to declare they are alive.
One of our residents lucky enough to be enjoying Easter outside wanted
me to read this poem A Spring Song (p 67 and also this one in her book
(p 69) [ This MAY be it. Jrc 2017]:
Dark sod pierced by flames of flowers,
Dead wood freshly quickening,
Bright skies dusked with sudden showers,
Lit by rainbows on the wing.

Cuckoo calls and young lambs' bleating,

Nimble airs which coyly bring
Little gusts of tender greeting
From shy nooks where violets cling.

Half-fledged buds and birds and vernal

Fields of grass dew-glistening;
Evanescent life's eternal
Resurrection, bridal Spring!
Mathilde Blind

One day last week the children and their leaders came from the Parkside
Christian School and sang lustily to us and they gave us each a handmade
gift: See this delightfully green pea-pod or green bean or whatever so happily
singing. I mounted it on my wall, next to my little smiling grandson's picture
whom we lost in death when he was only 4 .
And see this clever sheep so simply made. Put together with an empty
spool of thread with cotton glued on the body.
That there are still adults today who care enough to teach children about
Christ and bring them to visit us old people here that shows the Spirit of
Christ does live on! He lives. Christ Jesus lives today!

Let's turn to p.__ and listen to Esther play it once through, to help us
remember it. Perhaps we can just read the verse aloud as she plays it and
sing the important most important chorus, He lives only the first verse for
now....

Then this little pink banner was brought here by another group of
children and their leaders Brownies, I think? The little yellow chick popping
out of the broken egg shell another symbol that He lives!
 nd
Let's do the 2 verse and chorus.

Also this butterfly: some child from my own church Sunday School sent it
to me. I mounted him on my wall also under my grandson's photo. It too is a
sign as the beautiful butterfly has emerged from just a dull looking cocoon
It is new life coming forth.

Let's do the last verse and chorus He Lives.

Prayer.
God, help us not to lose hope but to keep looking for signs that Jesus is
alive today in nature in people in our friends. Amen.

No.23 God Will Take Care of You

May we have Peace forever more. A-men.