Happy Easter!

Quotes from our church bulletin this morning:

The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It's absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone's accomplishments meaningless.
-Woody Allen

This cross saved and converted the world, drove away error, brought back truth, made earth heaven, fashioned men into angels. Because of this cross, the devils are no longer terrible, but contemptible; neither is death, death, but a sleep.
-Chrysostom (c. 347-407)

My question-that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide-was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man...a question without an answer to which one cannot live. It was: Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?

-Leo Tolstoy

The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them any more.
-Karl Barth