Because He Lives

Do you ever have one of those projects brewing around in your mind for like....EVER....and you know it won't take long to complete but you just keep putting it off because so many other things dominate your time?

Well, I finally did it. And just in time for Holy Week, too, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the greatest Hope we have in this world:  A resurrected Savior who loves us, longs to be in relationship with us, and extends unconditional grace each and every day of our lives.

Using 650 pt, Monotype Corsiva font, I painted an old scrap of wood with these life-changing words from a song written by Gloria Gaither in the mid-1960's:

Because He Lives

  

God sent His Son,

they called Him Jesus,

He came to love,

heal, and forgive;

He lived and died

to buy my pardon,

An empty grave is there to prove

 my Savior lives.

 

chorus:
Because He lives I can face tomorrow,

Because He lives All fear is gone;

because I know

He holds the future.

And life is worth the living just

    because He lives. 

I can't hear or sing this anointed song without recalling a lifetime of sunny Easter mornings, flowers, greenery, and pastel dresses, lined up in a wooden pew with my siblings, my mom and dad, and belting the words of this song from the very depths of my young child heart.

I knew that I knew, just as certain as my strong daddy and my mom's big hair, that Jesus loved me, and that He would return for me one day.  

And even though I didn't know who my husband would be, or what I would do for a living, or where I would live ~

~ I did not fear, for I knew that "life was worth the living....just because.....He lives." 

So how can a painted sign be so important?  

When I walk into our house from the garage each day, it's the first thing I see and read. And automatically my heart finishes the hope-filled first line from the chorus, "...I can face tomorrow."  

Praise be to a God who makes each and every day worth living.

****Double the joy when I hear my children singing Because He Lives as they, too, pass through this doorway several times a day.  Although our children have danced with the Gaithers from the womb, this familiar tune fills our home frequently the last two weeks, and for that I am grateful.