Good morning church family,

The closer Kelly got to school, the more aware she became that something wasn’t right. The long ribbon of sidewalk she traveled every day to Evermonde High was usually filled with other kids like her. On any normal school day, scores of teenagers could be seen trudging to class; bent over under bulging backpacks, walled up behind ear buds, and chewing breakfast bars with sleepy, bovine expressions on their faces. But today, Kelly walked the sidewalk all alone.

As she rounded the corner of Lyons and Lafayette, Kelly caught her first glimpse of the high school that lay a couple-hundred yards down the street. The broad and sloping concrete stairway that led up to a large covered portico near the school’s entrance was absent its usual flood of climbing students. Looking at the pedestals sitting beneath the school’s large and stately columns, Kelly saw no one sitting down to scribble out his homework assignment or to scroll on her phone. Most striking of all, the line of school buses that usually stretched down Lafayette like a locomotive idling in the depot yard, was nowhere to be found. The proud school building looked almost sad and hollow. “What’s going on?” Kelly wondered to herself; standing still now and trying to process the sight. “Am I way late? Way early?”

Kelly had been out sick the day before. “I had a high fever,” she suggested with furrowed brow, “but I wouldn’t have lost complete track of…”

Just then she noticed Mr. Saunders, Evermonde’s principal, coming down the school steps. Kelly quickly continued her procession, hoping to get within earshot of the administrator before he was out of sight. “Mr. Saunders,” Kelly called out as her principal hit the bottom step. He didn’t hear her but it didn’t matter. He’d turned and was walking toward her.

“Good morning,” the principal said once their paths eventually crossed. He had looked up from a folder full of paperwork he was studying and saw Kelly walking toward him as though she was headed to class. The principal couldn’t hide the quizzical expression on his face.

“Good morning, Mr. Saunders,” Kelly said somewhat sheepishly. It didn’t appear that Mr. Saunders had recognized her. “What’s going on today? Where is everybody?”

“Oh – there’s no school today,” the principal said; a bit too eagerly. “Today’s a holiday – it’s Good Friday.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Kelly replied; lying. She had no idea what a “Good Friday” was. Since moving from Chicago to Louisiana the previous fall, she’d been initiated in all kinds of odd and curious things. “Well, thank you Mr. Saunders,” Kelly said, looking down and pulling her phone out of her back pocket. “I guess I’ll just head on back home then.”

“Okay, sorry about that,” Mr. Saunders said, smiling and picking back up his gait. “See you on Monday!”

Kelly suddenly felt conspicuous standing there with her backpack on and dressed in school clothes. She now noticed all the squinting glances she was receiving from drivers of cars passing by. Eager to get off the main road, Kelly took a side street she was fairly sure would wind around through neighborhoods and dump her out closer to home on Lyons. The sun was coming up now and the mid-April morning in the Bayou was quickly turning warm. Feeling hot, Kelly spied a concrete picnic table sitting under a large magnolia tree near the entrance to a cemetery. Feeling hungry all of a sudden, she decided to sit for a spell and have her lunch for breakfast.

The late-morning air was still cool under the shade of the magnolia and the light breeze clapping the leaves overhead felt refreshing on Kelly’s neck. She sat on the table’s top and let her feet rest on the bench below. Looking out over the cemetery, she breathed out a long sigh and let her shoulders drop. Her heart was turning light as she began to glory in the unexpected holiday. As she ate her turkey and cheese sandwich and sipped on her iced coffee, a meditative mood settled on her head. The quiet stillness of the cemetery park was proving peculiar food for her soul. But the faint hum of the morning traffic back on Lafayette, had her desiring to press further into the park in search of a sanctity she couldn’t articulate but knew she needed.

Leaving her backpack on the picnic table, Kelly ventured off to walk among the gravestones. As she nibbled on a granola bar and listened to the ice clink in her cup, she took note of some of the dates on the markers. This was evidently one of the older cemeteries in Houma. Most of the lifespans reported on the stones had been lived out in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With few exceptions, the granite, marble, and limestone markers leaned at funny angles; their crooked stances made more pronounced by the straight trunks of the pine, oak, and elm that flanked the ends of every row. Black mildew and flowering fungus covered the tops of the stones and were spreading down their fronts and backs. Kelly noted some of the olden-sounding names. There was a Hortense married to a Clarence, a Millicent wed to an Everett, and an Adelaide joined in conjugal bliss to a Jarvis.

But more than the funny names, curious symbols, and interesting histories untold between the hyphenated dates; what most caught Kelly’s attention were the oddly written epitaphs carved neatly into the stone on the front of the graves. Most of the inscriptions appeared to be religious in nature; seeming to Kelly to be medieval in their language and forms. She mostly just read over them as novelties; not really reading for comprehension. But when she came across the grave marker belonging to Marguerite Cormier, something that had been carved in the stone instantly captured her attention. Marguerite, who had died when she was only seventeen, had the following epitaph written under her name and above the symbol of a cross:

On Good Friday

He proved His love for me

On Good Saturday

My debt was paid in full

On Good Sunday

His resurrection secured an eternity for me

Kelly stared at the stone for a long time; reading and rereading its message. Looking around at all the graves within sight, she saw lots of crosses, crucifixes, and crowns of thorns. Over and over, Kelly saw the name of Christ carved out on the stones. Did Good Friday have something to do with Jesus? Kelly had a sense that it did. “If Jesus is the ‘He’ in Marguerite’s message,” Kelly wondered in her heart, “how did Jesus prove His love for her on Good Friday? And how did what happened on Saturday and Sunday give Marguerite the hope she seemed to have?”

Sitting carefully on the top of Marguerite’s gravestone, Kelly stuffed the granola bar wrapper in her front pocket and pulled out her phone. Into the search field on her Google app, Kelly typed: “what is good friday”.

We’re looking forward to gathering together tomorrow morning to hail the King who conquered death on our behalf. Praise Him!!! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

• Pastor Tate

Good afternoon church family,

Cyril had his wife go on into the grocery store ahead of him. “I’ve got a couple of text messages I really need to reply to,” he’d explained. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Cyril did, indeed, have a couple of unanswered text messages on his phone. He did not, however, need to reply to either of them. Nor did he need to check the headlines on Drudge, clear his Facebook notifications, watch some guy on YouTube drop a pine tree between his house and his shed, or eavesdrop on the homeless couple arguing over the proper way to pack groceries onto the side bags of a bicycle. But, for Cyril, all of these things took happy precedent over being wingman to his wife’s meanderings through the Piggly Wiggly.

By the time he finally made it into the store, Cyril’s wife was pretty well lost in the underbrush. The place was a crush of kids and coats and squeaky-wheeled buggies filling aisles that were already overcrowded with displays, promotions, and endcaps of every kind. Cyril walked the length of the store, peeking down every aisle trying to spy his bride, but wasn’t willing to plunge into the thicket himself. He knew from previous experience that such an endeavor was a fool’s errand. No, instead, he decided to post up against the little length of wall that stood between the bathrooms and the customer service desk at the front of the store. From this vantage point, he’d have a clear line of sight to all the checkout stands. Cyril knew he might get some guff for this approach but, then again, he would probably be getting guff either way. Cyril decided it best to simply wait his wife out.

Allowing himself a moment’s distraction, Cyril noticed that posted on the wall behind him was a collection of artwork on loan from the Simmonds Elementary third-grade class. At first, he gave only a passing glance at the display of watercolor paintings. They seemed little more than the unremarkable offerings of unremarkable kids. But feeling a little conspicuous just standing there, he soon turned to give his full attention to the pieces. Holding his hands behind his back and leaning in with his shoulders, he tilted his head back slightly and cast a squinting gaze down on each unframed work of art. Taking time to actually study each composition, his appreciation for the artistry of the offerings grew considerably. One painting entitled “Bird Hunt” painted by “Quinn, age 9” captured fairly well, the excitement of birds thundering to flight when flushed from bulrushes. Cyril stared at the work for some time; marveling at the movement and storytelling coming through on the wavy, water-damaged piece of paper. Cyril also studied a different painting entitled, “Umbrella Tree” painted by “Miranda, age 8”. A little girl in a bright, red raincoat stared out from under the bending boughs of a green umbrella tree. A light blue rain fell all around the little girl; waterlogging the page and drawing Cyril in under the tree. “Fascinating,” Cyril thought to himself. “I think I’d like to have this painting hanging in my house or tacked to the wall at work.”

“There you are,” Cyril’s wife said, ripping him away from the silent reverie he was enjoying. “Don’t you dare complain when we get home that I forgot something you need. You can just drive your dawdling little self back down here and get it yourself.”

The car ride home was necessarily quiet. But the silence allowed the art display’s accidental patron to continue to ponder the impact the watercolors had on him. Cyril noted a feeling rising in his soul that had long ago been lost to him. What Cyril was experiencing was inspiration.

For the remainder of that Saturday afternoon and evening, Cyril took a fast from all the stuff that normally filled his free time. He silenced his phone and left it charging beside his bed. He gave the remote control a rest and kept the car in the garage. Trundling down the basement stairs instead, Cyril began a search for his old 35 millimeter Canon camera. Like an archaeologist doing a dig on the tel of his former life, he sifted through the layers of all the previous civilizations that had thrived underneath that roof. Finally getting his hands on the camera, Cyril moved a camp chair under the single light bulb that was illuminating the room and sat down. Examining the artifact, he became reacquainted with the fineness of the thing. The camera came in a leather case and soft, worn leather was wrapped neatly around the body of the camera. He manipulated all the dials, operated the lens and focus ring, peered through the viewfinder, and clicked the shutter button. The whole experience sent thrills down his spine. He drank in the smell of the leather, gloried in the crisp clicks and snaps of the camera’s levers, dials, and counters, and delighted in the absence of any screen or digital display. “I’m going to order some film,” Cyril whispered to himself; deciding to begin scoping out some subjects to shoot. “I should go for a hike and do some reconnaissance.”

Carefully putting the camera back in its case and holding it securely in his lap, Cyril noticed the guitar case sitting on the floor beneath a pile of family suitcases. “My old six string,” he muttered with a sigh. Standing up and putting the camera down in the seat of the camp chair, he walked over and uncovered the guitar case. Kneeling down, he unhooked the clasps and swung open the lid. The sight of the old, acoustic filled his mind with thoughts of campfire smoke, the memory of glowing smiles, and the distant echo of friends singing in chorus. He reverently picked the guitar out of the case and, kneeling on one knee, propped the guitar on the other. Cyril began pinching the frets and picking at the keys. The only tune he could summon from the thing was the first one he ever learned to play. Fumbling at first but then falling into time and rhythm, Cyril made Sweet Home Alabama come to life; filling the basement with the song. It was glorious. “I’m going to have to get this thing tuned up,” Cyril determined in his heart as he gazed down on the instrument. “And I’m going to get callouses back on these fingers!”

But before he could gather up the treasures and head back up the stairs with them, one more thing caught Cyril’s eye. Beside the metal rack against the far wall was the wooden easel that he’d given to his daughter for Christmas years ago. Beside it, he saw the clear plastic tote filled with all her art supplies and one of the large sketch books he liked to buy for her. He quickly set up the easel under the light bulb and perched the sketch book on the little stand. Rummaging through the tote, he found a paint brush and a collection of paints in little wells with lids. He opened the sketch book to a blank sheet, set the paints up on a makeshift table made of stacked-up storage bins, and took the lids off of the paint.

Standing back, Cyril crossed his arms, put the tip of the brush to his lips, and stared at the blank page. Soon, a broad smile began to spread across his face and a “Thank you, Lord” sprung from his heart and came tumbling out of his mouth.

We’re looking forward to gathering together in the morning to enjoy fellowship with one another and communion with the Lord. What a blessing to be traveling light; with destruction behind us and glory ahead of us. And how grand to walk this pilgrim way with each other! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

• Pastor Tate