This Sunday there will be people worshiping in the chilly outdoors as the sun rises over the lake, the large attendance for the Sunday services, the family dinner and all the other activities that are a part of our Easter observance.
After Supper one Easter evening, Lars Tharp led the family in prayer — as he did every evening — and then he opened The Holy Bible for their daily reading and discussion. The reading for the day was JOHN 20:19-31 — a reading about one of Jesus’ Post-Resurrection appearances.

“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane It's Superman.” Yes, it's Superman ... strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman — who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!
Between the radio and later television, I memorized those words at a very early age — not that I tried. Along with the Saturday morning movie serials and the comic books, that radio and TV intro was memorized — without any effort — by all of my playmates. We all followed the exploits of Superman in his “never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.”
Recently, early one morning as I attended to my daily perusal of the nation’s newspapers, it was reported that Superman, the icon of “truth, justice and the American way” for 80 years will be renouncing his American citizenship. The publishers have decided that having Superman fight for “truth, justice and the American way” was offensive to some nations like Iran so the 900th issue of Superman comics will find Superman rushing to the UN to renounce his American citizenship, pledging to fight the good fight on a global scale. Superman even questions his longtime motto. "Truth, justice, and the American way — it's not enough anymore," he states.

Recently I received an e-mail reminding me of a summer I spent in Oregon half a century ago. Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1961, I served as a chaplain and cave guide at Oregon Cave National Park. Four or five times a day, seven days a week, during my three months there, I guided groups of tourists on an hour and a half tour of the cave. It was my job as cave guide to point out stalactite, stalagmite and flowstone formations, fungus and algae, bats and all the other material, plant and animal life in the cave.

Toward the end of the tour, we'd come to a large room -- about one-third the size of a football field. The room was 3,300 feet into the cave (more than a half mile) and 186 feet below the surface of the ground. When everyone was in position in the room, we would turn off the lights and show people what that portion of the cave was really like in its natural condition … in total darkness.