Sandi and I and Laura did something different with our Easter Sunday this year—we went to a friends house and had breakfast with several other people.

After breakfast, we sang some songs together and then took communion. After that several people around the room shared thier impressions about what the spirit of God was speaking to them.

After a few hours we left, feeling like we had really been in God’s presence and had been to “church”. Even Laura, my 13 year old daughter said that she had a good time—having a friend a day younger that her to hang out with—not to mention a cat, two dogs and a little baby.

A good time was had by all.

We were asked ahead of time to bring our instruments and some food to share. I gathered up my percussion stuff, violin and mandolin thinking that I would fit in with whatever was happening. At the very last minute, I decided to bring my guitar and some sheet music, just in case. I hadn’t planned on “leading” worship but that is what happened.

This is important to me on several different levels. Because of the internal struggles in the church Sandi and I attended for the past 22 years, I had more or less lost my musical voice. I was a member of the praise and worship team but had slowly lost touch of my gifting. Not that I am any great talent mind you—I can keep a beat and tend to pick up stringed instruments rather easily. But for the past several years I had not felt valued and probably should have stepped down from the worship team long before our differences became front page news and I was asked to take a time out.

That is all history now but somehow information that I feel is necessary in order to see the fullness of what happened this morning after breakfast.

I am beginning to get my voice back and this is what the Lord spoke to me this morning through the breaking of bread: It is time to come out of the tomb—the stone has been rolled away and you are free to fully live the life that I died for so that you might have that life and even have it more abundantly than before.

I can really relate. When something bad happens that we have not budgeted for (like leaving a church you have been a part of for 2 decades) the tendancy is to hide away, crawl into the tomb and wait for something extra-ordinary to happen in order to intice us to come out into the light.

I don’t think that many of us came to Christianity with a fantastic past filled with lots of love, appreciation and encouragement. If you did, that’s great, but many of the people I know had lives filled with parental divorce, unhappiness and broken relationships.

When I was born again I remember feeling that for the first time in my life I had finally found a place of love and acceptance that went beyond what I had ever experienced heretofore. I knew that my wife really loved me, but the love I felt that evening when I gave my life to Christ in a friends living room was something that felt like the fullfillment of all that I had ever hoped for. If you have been there, you know what I am talking about.

That was sometime in 1979—it is now early spring 2007—nearly 28 years later and I am still on the scent of the plate of food that was set before me on that evening so long ago. I will have to admit I have eaten more than my share of food that really didn’t make me healthy but somehow seemed to fill me up for the moment.

After this morning, I am more than ever looking forward to a place at the banquet table that is even now being prepared for me. Until that time Huevos Rancheros with friends on Easter morning will serve to fill my stomach and give me hope that we will all find our place in the greater scheme of things.

Enjoy your ride today…the stone has been rolled away.