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PRAYERGEAR.COM / SPIRITUAL RESOURCE SERVICES
NEWSLETTER
April 19, 2000 Issue 41: Easter Celebration Year 2000
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<>< CONTENTS <><
1. Mini-Reflection
2. Cruising Christian Cyberspace!
3. Prayergear.com product and services updates
4. Let us know!
5. Weekly Reflection: "Easter Celebration Prayer, Year
2000"
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Greetings to all in the Name of our Lord! We are sending you this
week's Newsletter a day early to free us to concentrate on
prayer, reflection, study and worship during these holiest days
in the Christian calendar. Thank you again for another
opportunity to share together in His Name.
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1. ~~ ** Mini-Reflection ** ~~
"Jesus walked on a little way before He knelt down and
prayed. 'Father, if You will, please don't make Me suffer by
having Me drink from this cup. But do what You will, and not what
I want.'" (Luke 22:41-42)
We received this email a couple of days ago: "Many people
were crucified and executed in other horrible ways. Christ's
followers went through great suffering and torture that seemed to
exceed what Christ endured. One of them was even crucified
himself, but upside down. I'm wondering why Christ's suffering
was described in a way that suggests it was more horrible than
what others experienced."
We appreciate readers and subscribers thinking "out
loud" and sharing with us. Think of your own response.
You'll read our's below.
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2. ~~ ** Cruising Christian Cyberspace! ** ~~
"And He told them to go out and preach the Gospel to all the
world." (Mark 16:15)
As we wrote last week, we want to make this newsletter the most
interactive one on the Internet! Listservs and newsgroups are
interactive, but ezines/newsletters tend to be one-direction (and
many are just long ads for the company's products.) We have so
many great world wide web Christian resources to tell you about
(thank the Lord!), but when one of you takes the time and
interest in sharing something with us, you become priority! So
our web site feature of this week comes from a subscriber:
< Hi John, check out http://www.raycomfort.com/
I don't remember how I stumbled into it but it's interesting. You
can
listen online to his teaching, "Hell's Best Kept
Secret." Exploring the
site finds many interesting things including a Creation Science
page, a page
about his tracts, and even a "make your own tract"
page. Interesting! >
We also found this evangelically oriented site interesting. The
home page opens with a product pitch, but the site is full of
valuable information to help anyone nurture his or her faith,
belief system and commitment to the Great Commission.
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3. ~~ ** Prayergear.com Product and Service Updates ** ~~
Our "What's New" page is
earning its title. We hope you have been enjoying the new weekly
cartoon feature, the Proverb of the Day and the Verse of the Day,
in addition to the formatted Weekly Reflections. (Back issues of
these newsletters are also accessible there.) Now visit What's
New for a one-minute audio summary of the day's "Religion
Today" news and a one-minute audio breaking news feature,
sponsored by Crosswalk.com. (And remember you can get all the
printed news on the Services page,
updated hourly.)
Due to a surge of interest in Bible cases, we have added a new
line from Gregg Manufacturing. Check these excellent products at
great prices
@ Bible Cases and Covers .
Please continue to shop our online Products Store and help
support our ministries...and share this with others! (No one
draws any salary or compensation from these sales.) We strive to
provide the best line of Christian growth items and service.
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4. ~~ ** Let us know! ** ~~
We appreciate the email thoughts we receive such as the one
quoted in the Mini-Reflection at the top of this newsletter. It
is true that our Christian concentration on "the cross"
detracts from the historical reality that execution by
crucifixion was rather common and many people suffered its
horrors. The Roman empire did not invent or perfect this mode of
execution, having learned it from the many nations it conquered.
Nor was it the only mode of execution used. But death by
crucifixion carried the mark of great shame, saved only for the
most despicable of criminals. Roman citizens could only be
legally crucified by direct permission from ruling head of the
empire, and was rarely granted. It was a slow, shameful,
torturous death. And yes, two men accused of theft hung on each
side of Jesus, enduring the same physical suffering. I never
heard anyone write or preach about the image of three crosses and
three men dying on Golgotha, the "Place of the Skull."
The fact that Jesus was not alone in being crucified, I believe,
is a statement that teaches us crucifixion was not the source of
suffering for our Lord.
At one point Jesus cried, "Eloi, Eloi, lema
sabachthani?" ("My God, My God, why have You deserted
Me?") (Mark 15:34.) The implications of this mournful cry
brings tears to my eyes. Earlier, Jesus asked the Father to spare
Him of the cup He was about to drink. The scriptures explain that
"Jesus was in great pain and prayed so sincerely that His
sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood." (Luke 22:44.)
The previous verse said "An angel from heaven came to help
Him." Clearly, this was not a person preparing for His
crucifixion. Let me make a bold suggestion: Good Friday is not
about the cross...It is about that cup! Significantly, Jesus
didn't asked to be spared of horrible execution; He asked to be
spared of that cup!
Allow me a crude analogy. Imagine if you were asked by your
parent to drink raw human sewage in order to save the lives of
family members. Not a sip. A full cup. Revolting image. It would
be difficult to get even the second sip down, yet the third and
fourth... Multiply that a zillion times. Poisoning yourself with
the waste of others. And that disgusting image is only physical.
In that cup that Jesus willingly drank were the sins of all
people, past, present and future. The saying, "You are what
you eat" applies here...which is why at one point Jesus was
the most loneliest and abandoned person in the universe, crying
out to our Father, "Why did you desert Me?" Jesus was
no longer the Father's Son at that moment; He was our disgusting
sin. By choice. Such incomprehensible suffering! Such
incomprehensible love!
That's what Good Friday is about. And to truly reflect on it
takes us into the realm of reverent silence and being
overwhelmed.
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5. ~~ This week's Weekly Reflection follows below ~~
Part 4 of this month's Weekly Reflections, Wisdom Versus
Knowledge, will be published next week. During this holy week, I
leave you with a prayer...
John
John S. Hilkevich, Ph.D.
Spiritual Resource Services: Prayergear.com
~ Education, Services and Products
in the Christian Faith ~
www.prayergear.com
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For a more attractively formatted Easter Celebration Prayer,
point your browser to
http://www.prayergear.com/easterprayer.html
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EASTER
CELEBRATION PRAYER
Year 2000
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