What an incredible weekend we had! As I write this, I am amazed at how many parts of your body can be sore at once, yet praising God that I still have a voice! What a joy it was to be able to join in with my church family and friends (and their family and friends) and celebrate the good news that Jesus is Messiah and King and has defeated death!

We began our gathering with Angus Dei as our way of unburying the alleluias. This brought our Lenten journey full circle as we had removed the word “alleluia” from out weekend liturgies since Ash Wednesday in preparation for Easter. And it showed. What our church deposited then by burying, they dug up with interest and really lifted their voices, even when we sang in Spanish!

We then sang two hymns that I love. the first, All Creatures of our God and King, was originally penned by Saint Augustine and then arranged more recently by David Crowder. We then transitioned into the song In Christ Alone. To be honest, it is difficult to get through this song without getting choked up. The Gettys really know how to compact a rich Christology into 4 verses. This line gets me every time : No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me / From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny / no pow’r of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from his hand.

Ellis taught on Mark 8:31-9:1 in a teaching he entitled Antonym. He did a masterful job displaying how much we think that Jesus is the opposite of what he really is (i.e. Peter’s rebuke).

We then responded with more singing. A song that has become a sort of anthem for our church is All the Poor and Powerless. This song is by one of my new favorite worship artists, All Sons and Daughters. If you don’t have their latest full album, buy it. And if you do the iTunes thing, buy the LP on iTunes because it comes with chord charts and videos.

Then keeping with the ‘alleluia” theme, we did a rewritten version of Jef Buckley’s Hallelujah called Another Halllelujah by Lincoln Brewster. I LOVED singing this one with all our voices! We then ended our set with Gungor’s This is Not the End. This is such an epic sounding song and I have to give strong kudos to the band for working through the difficulties of this song (it changes time signature in the middle of the song and then goes back again!)

Thanks again to my bandmates and all our volunteers who made yesterday possible. It is an honor to serve with you all!

Grace and Peace be with you…

-D