Our Petersen Family: Easter Weekend (over 3 months ago)

Catching up is a bit therapeutic and a bigger bit of a pain at the same time but I do it to help me remember the good things in life.

For me, this Easter was especially spiritual. For a few years now, the week leading up to Easter we have focused our scripture study on the last week of Christ's ministry on Earth. This year the experience was enriched with art and music depicting those sacred events and then to top it off we were able to attend The Pageant of Our Lord and Forrest Lawn in Glendale the day before Easter.

We started with The Pageant of Our Lord at Rolling Hills Covenant Church. They did a beautiful job portraying Christ's life through life size masterpieces of paintings and sculptures using live models, music, and narration. When the show ended with a beautiful scene of the resurrection and singing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah my soul was soaring. But when the curtain stayed closed and people started rising from their seats I was hit with a wave of sadness along with a myriad of other emotions. They are wonderful, God fearing, Christian people doing a great service to the community, but they don't know the whole story. They don't know there is more! I was overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude for the knowledge I have and at the same time a heightened desire to share that knowledge with others. I don't know if anyone outside of my family will read this, but if you do and you want to know what happened after Christ's resurrection and what your purpose here on Earth is, please visit here.

After our experience at Rolling Hills Covenant Church we headed to the Forest Lawn in Glendale. Once again I found my soul soaring. They have exact replicas of many of Michelangelo's works and a spectacular stained glass window of the Last Supper. I knew they had those things and was looking forward to viewing them, but I was not expecting to see Jan Styka's painting of The Crucifixion. Honestly, I had never even heard of it but I will never forget the way I felt when the curtains were opened and I saw the life size image of Christ, standing resolute, the moment before he was raised on the cross. The overwhelming awe I felt literally took my breath away. It wasn't until the tears were falling from my cheeks that I even realized I was crying. I look forward to going again and if it happens to be on Easter weekend, well that would be superb.