Take a look at this fingerprint.  I don’t know whose finger it belongs to, but I do know that just like yours and mine it is 100% unique.  There isn’t another just like it.  The swirls, the spacing, the simple but complex pattern says this fingerprint can only come from one person.  One person created by God.
     What is so amazing is that God created the person who made this fingerprint out of love.  He then gave him or her a brain that not only experiences life through five wonderful senses, but also a mind that interprets those experiences with an infinite range of emotions, and the greatest of all those emotions is love.  Isn’t it phenomenal too that love feels fantastic in both giving and receiving?
     Just like this fingerprint, we are individuals, but we don’t live in isolation for we are created as beings who experience life to its fullest only when we share ourselves with each other.  When we work together, when we celebrate together, when we worship together and especially when we love together.  It is in being together that others bring out the best in us, (and sometimes the worst, its true), but when we share our lives with each other we honor Christ by fulfilling his great command:  “So now I am giving you a new commandment:  Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.”  John 13:34-35 NLT.
     In the weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection the disciples were together as friends, as frightened believers, and as a perplexed community of people who were trying to make sense of all that happened.
      Each Sunday in April we’ll hear the stories of these people, their experiences witnessing a risen Jesus, their doubt, and their fear.  We’ll talk about how their lives were forever changed.  Through it all we’ll hear how their relationships with others changed so many lives and how it is the power of God, the Holy Spirit, who directed them, gave them courage and changed our world.
     Come join us on Easter Sunday as we once again here the stirring story of how the women discovered that Jesus was not in the tomb.  Come experience the risen Christ and help us celebrate as we welcome 9 new members to our church.  Come and share the Lord’s supper and come in fellowship to pray, to sing (our choir will be singing too, yeah!), and to grow your faith as a community of believers, individuals loving each other as He loves us.       Peace, Patrick