(no subject)

In Christ alone my heart is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My comforter, my all in all
Here in the love of Christ I stand

In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
'Til on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final death
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
'Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand

Weekend report.

I've been running the projector for the church for a couple of months now. This being the most important service of the year, not to mention involving a few extra features we don't normally mess with -- live camera projection, DVD -- meant our Audio/Video department head (Jerry) was running around the booth beforehand to make sure we understood absolutely everything we needed to do. By golly, we were going to do this flawlessly, and nothing would stop us!

So, of course, God taught Jerry humility by blowing the circuit breaker to the projector. ^^;;;; We missed an entire song getting it back up and running; thankfully, it was in the hymnals, so the worship leader was able to direct the congregation (that's church-speak for "audience"!) to dust them off and read from there. (I knew we still had those for a reason.) Our screw-up for the day complete, we handled all the more complicated tasks without incident... though that may have been partially because Jerry got paranoid and didn't leave the booth again until the very end of the service.

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The church also did a "Journey to the Cross" on Good Friday, which was open for the entire afternoon: people would enter the church and move from station to station, each depicting a scene during Christ's last day before His execution. Inspired by the Catholic Stations of the Cross, but we aimed for something much more physical and interactive. We had at least 20 potted plants in one corner for the Garden of Gethsemane, a path with bloody footprints to walk down, and an actual casket at the end.* The most effective, though, was a wooden cross... and a box of nails. It becomes very real to you when you take a nail and a hammer and pound it into the wood. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, all at once. Having the station there also meant that you could be at some other location in the room and suddenly hear, in the distance, the WHAM! WHAM! of a nail entering the cross. Very powerful.

Oh, and of course the Good Friday service that evening had to have its own glitch... The church has a large but empty cross engraved on the wall, and during the entire afternoon we'd had Jesus projected on it (my contribution to the "Journey" project: getting that set up). We intended to keep Him up there through the evening service, but we'd neglected to take into account that we'd had to restart the projector multiple times over the afternoon because it was beginning to overheat. Sure enough, midway through the service, Jesus suddenly had "High Temperature" flashing next to Him... about ten minutes later, the projector had performed an emergency shutdown and Jesus had bugged out entirely. The pastor, ever on top of things, merely pointed out at the end of his sermon that although Good Friday is a time to be mournful, the best part was ahead, because (and here he gestured to the empty cross to much chuckling) "as you can see, He's not on the cross anymore!"

* Interesting story behind that one: we wanted to borrow one from a mortuary, but apparently they can't sell a coffin once it's been "used". No, it didn't matter that no one was actually in the casket at any time, or that it would never be buried. However, after further discussion, the mortuary decided to simply give us the casket. Well, hey, we're a church, we do funerals, so sure. The staff figure that they can offer it to use for "in state" viewings of people who are eventually going to be cremated and don't need it permanently.