Monday Morning Music Ministry

Start Your Week with a Spiritual Song in Your Heart

Softly and Tenderly

Easter Week has ended in the US (of course, we should pray that it never ends — its Truth is everlasting), but it is not so everywhere. Orthodox churches celebrate Christ’s resurrection according to other schedules and, I have just learned from my college friend John Siegmund, now a Lutheran pastor in Germany, there is an “Easter Monday” too:

“Thanks so much for your good wishes for a blessed Holy Week. I will be celebrating Holy Thursday with the mass of the Institution of the Lord’s Supper. Immediately following we will strip the altar, removing everything that can be carried but the remaining eucharistic gifts into the sacristy until Easter Vigil. I will climb up to the main cross in our church and give the Lord a black drape which will hang until the preparations for the Easter Vigil.

“Weather permitting, we will hold the Stations of the Cross in our town following the Good Friday service of penance and veneration of the Cross of Christ. On Saturday night we will celebrate the Vigil of Easter followed by Easter breakfast, donated by church members. On Easter Sunday and on Easter Monday we celebrate the glorious resurrection of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ with a festive liturgy in the morning.

“Easter Monday is still a legal holiday here, although particularly mainline Protestant parishes don’t observe it with a festive service, but, at best, with evening concerts or the like…”

Isn’t there a comfort — beyond the spiritual reality, which is paramount — but isn’t there a comfort in the old traditions, the old hymns, the old fellowships? Indeed, the Old Gospel? There are reasons they all developed, and established themselves, and became beloved and old. Can’t our world and our lives slow down a little bit, so all of the Old — “Good Old” — doesn’t disappear from view?

Enjoy this old-time gospel song. “Ye who are weary, come home…”

Click:  Softly and Tenderly

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... Rick Marschall is the author of 74 books and hundreds of magazine articles in many fields, from popular culture (Bostonia magazine called him "perhaps America's foremost authority on popular culture") to history and criticism; country music; television history; biography; and children's books. He is a former political cartoonist, editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney comics. For 20 years he has been active in the Christian field, writing devotionals and magazine articles; he was co-author of "The Secret Revealed" with Dr Jim Garlow. His biography of Johann Sebastian Bach for the “Christian Encounters” series was published by Thomas Nelson. He currently is writing a biography of the Rev Jimmy Swaggart and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis. Read More