He’s Alive!

“This weekend, Christians will rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus. While every Lord’s Day is a reminder of what Jesus accomplished, Easter Sunday is a special day of joy and celebration for believers around the world.

This is the season we remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and celebrate His victory over death. It’s also the perfect time to recommit to live our lives for God’s glory.

Easter is also a time of reflection. We reflect with gratitude on the suffering of Christ, on our behalf. We also reflect on our confidence – because of His resurrection – on that coming day when we will be swept into Heaven.” Stephen Davey

I rejoice am so thankful for everything the Lord has done for me through the years! Especially since I have deserved none of what He has done! Starting with salvation at the age of 10.

We were living in Liberty, Indiana. The year was 1965. We were attending the First Baptist Church in College Corner Indiana/Ohio…..not sure which. College Corner was divided. Part of it was in Indiana and part of it was in Ohio. The school I attended straddled the state line. Dad was working on a farm and we were living in the farm house of that property. I remember it was a big house. I remember watching “Frankenstein” there. I remember riding one of the horses belonging to the owner of the farm. I was on the horse bareback when the horse took off running. I had no idea how to guide it! I just hung on the its mane for dear life! It ran down the road and the next thing I knew it stepped into the ditch along side of the dirt road and I went flying over its head. When I hit the ditch the breath was knocked out of me. I looked up and saw the horse. I thought it was going to fall on top of me, but it didn’t! Thank the Lord! I don’t remember what happened after that. I’m sure the owner’s son had run after the horse and probably led it back to the corral. I didn’t get back on a horse for a long time!

I remember we attended church faithfully. The pastor was Harold Haynes and his wife was Anne. They had a daughter named Sandra, I believe. And I believe there was a son, but I don’t remember his name. Mom and dad were saved during our time there. I don’t remember dates. I just remember asking mom about being saved and she said I needed to talk to the pastor. I can see myself talking with him as the back of the auditorium. I don’t really remember going forward, but I’m sure I probably did.

Dad accepted a truck driving job with Emery Air Freight at the Greater Cincinnati Airport located in Northern Kentucky that year. Or it may have been Rocket Transportation that was bought out by Emery Air Freight; I’m not sure which it was. At any rate, we rented and moved to a dairy farm house in Union, KY. I’m not sure that the dairy farm was active at that time, however. But before we moved mom, dad and I were all baptized at the Baptist church in Dartown, OH.

I’m not sure how long we lived there before Bro. Robert T. Ginn, Pastor of the Big Bone Baptist Church, came knocking on our door and invited us to church. We were members there several years before we moved to River Road in Hebron, KY. I’m guessing the year was 1968. Eventually we started attending Pleasantview Baptist Church in Constance, KY, Pastor Eugene Dunn. We attended Conner Junior and Senior High.

Tim moved down the street about 1/4 mile from us in 1970. On March 13, 1971 we became a couple. We both graduated from Conner Sr. High on June 3, 1973 and Tim started college at Louisville University in Louisville, KY that fall. I started working. I would send him money to come home and go to the Greyhound bus station in Covington, KY to pick him up. We always ate at the Skyline in Covington before going home.

Reflection

April 4, 1974…..can it really have been 49 years ago?…..the tornado struck. On a Wednesday afternoon. Mom was in the basement working on supper…..chili. It was hailing softball sized. Dad was collecting them and putting them in the freezer. Then the tin and garbage started flying over the hill and he had enough time to run for shelter in the basement. Mom ran upstairs where I was sleeping since I was working the night shift at IRS. We went flying down the stairs and all of us were under the dining room table (Elisabeth had that table when she and Brad first got married). Glass and debris was everywhere when it was all said and done…..a matter of minutes. Dad had fish tanks along one basement wall. They were all in the floor. What a mess! When it quieted down we went outside to survey the damage. We saw the twister across the river in Sayler Park, Ohio. At one point we thought it looked like the funnel cloud had turned and was heading back across the river towards us so we hit the basement again and back under the table. But it didn’t return, thank the Lord! We went back outside. Our VW bus was gone. The station wagon was scooted sideways through the yard. The porch awning above the garage was a mangled mess. The next door neighbors’ home was gone from the foundation up. They had all been in their basement and were even lifted up in the wind. They were OK. The neighbors on the other side of us had one room left. The linoleum was stripped out from underneath them. The marina’s boat barns across the road were gone and the boats that were left were mangled. FEMA totaled our home which had been lifted, twisted, and set back down. Insurance would not pay us for the VW bus until it was found. Someone dredged it from the Ohio River. The neighbors on the corner of Tanner and River Road, Electa and Bill Sprague, were not injured, but their house was laying on its side. We spent the night at Tim’s house. We ended up renting a house back over near Big Bone Baptist Church until mom and dad bought the house on Hathaway Road in Union, KY. I did not return to IRS.

I told that story because I could see clear evidence in God’s protective hand on our lives…..really everyone in our neighborhood. That whole street, us and our close neighbors, could have been blown into eternity that day! But the Lord was not finished with us yet.

Due to a split at the Big Bone Baptist Church, we were part of the charter membership at the Grace Baptist Church mission, pastored by Bro. Ginn. My brother still attends there. The current pastor is Brother Wilbert Ellis. The mother (sponsoring) church was in Harrison, Ohio, pastored by Brother Berlin Heisel. I believe Brother Ronnie Wolff is there now. He was the pianist for the Bluegrass Boys Quartet.

The Lord began working on Tim’s heart for the call to ministry, I would guess, sometime in 1974. It may have been later than that, I’m not sure. It is really neither here nor there. When Tim spoke to me about going to the Louisville Southern Baptist Seminary I told him I didn’t want to marry a preacher. He never said another word about it again. He continued attending U of L until May 7, 1976. On May 8, 1976 we were married by the Justice of the Peace in Covington, KY, in the 3rd floor apartment at 1414 Greenup Street. I had moved in about a month earlier to start setting up housekeeping and get it ready for after we were married. Tim finished his studies for an accounting degree at Northern KY University in Alexandria, KY. He worked part time at McDonalds in Newport, KY and I was working full time in downtown Cincinnati. We continued to attend Grace Baptist Church in Florence, about 30 minutes away via I-75.

The Lord was still working on Tim for the ministry. We were in charge of the primary Sunday school class and Tim was also the treasurer for the church. In 1978 while on visitation with Bro. Ginn, Tim asked him how someone knew if God was calling them into the ministry. Bro. Ginn told him if he could do anything else besides preach that he should do it. I don’t know the time frame, but one Sunday on the way to church Tim told me he felt like God was calling him to preach. I remember feeling very sad that because I had told him I didn’t want to marry a preacher he had never talked to me about it. By that time, however, I was ready. God’s timing is always right on time! And when I look back on all of the years of putting him through Seminary and all of the years filled with trials…..especially during the years I was not working while the kids were growing up…..you know what I remember the most? The blessings. The blessings that would fill a book if I were to try and enumerate them…..And even after Tim left me alone on earth way too early, I am still blessed every day! And it’s all because of Christ. I’m so glad He chose to write my name in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world!

Count Your Blessings
by Johnson Oatman (1897)

1 When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done. 

Refrain:
Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your blessings, see what God hath done;
Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.

2 Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, ev’ry doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by. [Refrain]

3 When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings, money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high. [Refrain]

4 So, amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end. [Refrain]

Baptist Hymnal, 1991

He’s Alive!
by Don Francisco

The gates and doors were barred and all the windows fastened down,
I spent the night in sleeplessness and rose at every sound,
Half in hopeless sorrow half in fear the day,
Would find the soldiers crashing through to drag us all away.
Then just before the sunrise I heard something at the wall,
The gate began to rattle and a voice began to call,
I hurried to the window and looked down to the street,
Expecting swords and torches and the sound of soldiers feet,

There was no one there but Mary so I went down to let her in,
John stood there beside me as she told us were she’d been,
She said they moved him in the night and none of us knows where,
The stones been rolled away and now his body isn’t there.
We both ran toward the garden then John ran on ahead,
We found the stone and the empty tomb just the way that Mary said,
But the winding sheet they wrapped him in was just an empty shell,
And how or where they’d taken him was more than I could tell.

Something strange had happened there but what I did not know,
John believed a miracle but I just turned to go,
Circumstance and speculation couldn’t lift me very high,
Cause I’d seen them crucify him and then I’d watched him die,
Back inside the house again all the guilt and anguish came,
Everything I’d promised him just added to my shame,
But at last it came to choices I denied I knew his name,
Even If he was alive it wouldn’t be the same.

But suddenly the air was filled with a strange and sweet perfume,
Light that came from everywhere drove shadows from the room,
Jesus stood before me with his arms held open wide,
And I fell down on my knees and clung to him and cried,
He raised me to my feet and as I looked into his eyes,
Love was shining out from him like sunlight from the sky,
Guilt and my confusion disappeared in sweet release,
And every fear I’d ever had just melted into peace.

He’s alive, He’s alive, He’s alive and I’m forgiven,
Heavens gates are open wide.
He’s alive, He’s alive, He’s alive and I’m forgiven,
Heavens gates are open wide.
He’s alive, He’s alive, He’s alive and I’m forgiven,
Heavens gates are open wide.

He’s alive!