Welcome to today's encouragement from the Our Daily Bread Devotional.

I'm Bill Crowder, and I titled today's reading, Remember and Celebrate.

On December 6, 1907, explosions rocked a small community in the U.S. state of West Virginia,

producing one of the worst disasters in the history of the coal mining industry.

Some 360 miners were killed, and it's been estimated that this horrific tragedy left behind

about 250 widows and a thousand children

without fathers. Historians maintain that the memorial service became the seedbed from which the

celebration of Father's Day in the United States would eventually grow. Out of great loss came

remembrance and eventually grow. Out of great loss came remembrance and eventually celebration.

The greatest tragedy in human history occurred when human beings crucified their creator.

Yet that dark moment also produced both remembrance and celebration. The night before he would

go to the cross,

Jesus took the elements of Israel's Passover

and created his own memorial celebration.

Luke's record describes the scene this way,

and he took bread,

gave thanks and broke it,

and gave it to them saying,

This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

Still today, whenever we take communion, we honor his great unflinching love for us,

remembering the cost of our rescue and celebrating the gift of life his sacrifice produced.

As Charles Wesley said in his great hymn,

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