On February 27, 1991, at the height of Desert Storm, Ruth Dillow received a very sad message from the Pentagon. It stated that her son, Clayton Carpenter, Private 1st Class, had stepped on a mine in Kuwait and was dead.<\/p>\n
Ruth Dillow later wrote, \u201cI can\u2019t begin to describe my grief and shock. It was almost more than I could bear. For three days I wept. For three days I expressed anger and loss. For three days people tried to comfort me, to no avail because the loss was too great.\u201d<\/p>\n
But three days after she received that message, the telephone rang. The voice on the other end said, \u201cMom, it\u2019s me. I\u2019m alive.\u201d Ruth Dillow said, \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it at first. But then I recognized his voice, and he really was alive.\u201d The message was all a mistake!<\/p>\n
She said, \u201cI laughed, I cried, I felt like turning cartwheels, because my son whom I had thought was dead, was really alive. I\u2019m sure none of you can even begin to understand how I felt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps not, but the earliest disciples would have understood how she felt because they experienced the same emotions themselves. One day they watched their best friend and teacher being nailed to a cross. They witnessed His pain as He cried out, \u201cI thirst!\u201d and, \u201cMy God, my God, why have You forsaken me?\u201d All their hopes and dreams were buried with Him.<\/p>\n
Friday and all day Saturday they mourned, until finally, on \u201cthe first day of the week, early in the morning,\u201d the scripture says, some women made their way along the path that led to His tomb, wondering who would roll away the stone for them.<\/p>\n
But when they arrived, they found that the stone had already been rolled away. And an angel there told them, \u201cYou\u2019re looking in the wrong place. You\u2019re looking for Jesus among the dead. He is not dead. He is alive. He is risen, even as He said!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On February 27, 1991, at the height of Desert Storm, Ruth Dillow received a very sad message from the Pentagon. It stated that her son, Clayton Carpenter, Private 1st Class, had stepped on a mine in Kuwait and was dead. Ruth Dillow later wrote, \u201cI can\u2019t begin to describe my grief and shock. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[312,1058,1097,725],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}