Mission Good Friday 2019

The weather was great over the Easter weekend here in central Iowa. As usual, I got Good Friday off as a company holiday, and thanks to David and Ana Lee Heckart, we were able to do the annual public reading of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ in downtown Marshalltown over the lunch hour (me in English, David in Spanish). We also passed out some gospel tracts and had a few conversations with passers-by, especially Ana.

Ana Lee snapped this photo while we were getting set up, and I had to laugh! At first glance I was irritated: "Oh great...a garbage truck just photo-bombed our outreach today." But you know, that's just pride. When I think I'm really doing something for the Lord, I need to be reminded of what my own righteousness is, according to Isaiah 64:6. In light of that, I thought: "How appropriate!" And later, our friend Frank Chirico replied in a text message:
"Awesome. The STONE has rolled away. PTL."

That's what this is all about: our faith rests on a living Savior who came into this world to take the "bullet" of death that was meant for us, and to defeat sin, death and Hell: "...that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14,15). That stone was rolled away, the tomb is empty, Jesus is alive, and we proclaim a risen Savior to the world. What good news we have to share with everyone!

We read the account from John's gospel this year, John 18:37 - 20:31. Here's the LINK to the audio:  apologies in advance for the wind and traffic noise.