Ocala First Connection

Isaiah 25:6-9 *Mark 16:1-8 * Colossians 3:1-4 ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you...." ~Mark 16:6 Alleluia!!! Christ is risen! Hope has come! "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.” ― N. T. Wright    Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. ~Clarence W. Hall       “Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”  ― N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope ...what happens after Easter i...

Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24 *Mark 16:1-20 * Romans 8:31-39   “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen,they went to the tomb." ~Mark 16:1-2 The Gospel reading for today speaks of Jesus’ resurrection, but “Holy Saturday” is traditionally when we remember Jesus’ time in the grave (“ he was crucified, died and was buried… ”). We know the hope of resurrection in Jesus, but we’re not there yet. This place, "this wax-crayon place of trust and waiting, of accepting what we cannot know, mourning what needs to be mourned, and hoping for what seems impossible..." (Jerusalem Jackson Greer). This is the tension—the “in-between” tension—of Holy Saturday. And it’s where we Christians live. Lord Jesus help me to wait here In the in-between Of Holy Saturday. For I cannot help but rejoice ...