THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
The early morning chill made
shivers run
through my body. I was but a child,
maybe seven or eight at the oldest. I
stood with other church members from
This, to my knowledge at least, was
the first sunrise service I had ever attended.
Our pastor, the Rev. Claud Boynton, who had come to our church
when I
was age six, was what we call a bi-vocational pastor.
For his “real” living, he worked under that
inimitable forest ranger, Mr. Arthur Woody, to patrol the forests of
our
section of north
Pastor Boynton had many innovative
ideas that we at Choestoe had not experienced before.
One of them was to hold an Easter sunrise
service. And so we were gathered there,
on the crest of the Holt property hill, awaiting the sunrise that early
Easter
morning.
As I mentioned above, I was cold. Mornings
in Choestoe in March or early April
(I did not look back to see which month Easter might have fallen, for I
really
don’t know exactly what year that long-ago sunrise service was held.) Even wrapped in my warmest coat, the early
morning cold penetrated, and I wondered if I had been wise to attend
the
service. Everything about it was new and
unusual to my child mind.
But the impression it made has held
for my lifetime since then. I became
aware at a very early age of how special Easter is.
Where there was death and a tomb, there came,
instead, resurrection from the dead and an empty grave.
Where there was sadness and mourning, there
came joy and hope. From that point
onward in my life, any time I stood at the grave of one beloved, I did
not
consider the doom associated with death but the victory in resurrection.
You might say the cold I felt on that
long-ago Easter morning when I attended my first sunrise service turned
to a
warmth in my heart that sees beyond death to life everlasting.
I can see in my mind’s eye the
brilliance of the sunrise on that long ago Easter.
I return again and again to the words my
pastor, the Rev. Claud Boynton read from Matthew 28:1-10 (or maybe he
read from
Mark 16:1-11, or Luke 24:1-12, or John 20:1-18, all accounts of the
resurrection). The experience of that
first sunrise service made a deep and lasting impression on me. It changed my perspective on death and dying
and gave me hope for life and eternity.
How much would I need that hope, and how it grew into fruition a
few
years later when my beloved aunt, grandfather and my own mother died (I
was
only fourteen at her death).
So Easter is a time of hope.
It was many years later, 1978, as a
matter of fact. It was not even Easter
in early spring but July, and heat from the sun in the Holy Land let us
(my
husband Grover, his sister Estelle and I)
know that we were in a strange land.
But in a sense, it was not a strange land, for most of my life I
had
read and heard about the places Jesus frequented when He was in the
flesh upon
this earth.
My husband and I, in that summer of
1978, were having the privilege of visiting his sister Estelle who was
a
missionary to the
We experienced seeing the empty tomb
and hearing a service of celebration beside it.
I thought of times in my husband’s ministry when he had led
Easter
sunrise services at various churches he pastored. All
of those early morning vigils were filled
with hope and joy. The visit to
c2010 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published Apr. 1, 2010 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail [email protected];
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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