We greet you at every single Fresh Life location, church online, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, all the places, all the things on our app.

And if you have a way to get to the scriptures, we're going to be in John chapter 6, verse 47 today,

John chapter 6, verse 47.

And I am taking as my title this weekend the empty chair and the aching heart, the empty chair and the aching heart.

Nothing is quite so hard when you've lost a loved one, a seeing their favorite piece of furniture.

Where they used to sit, to come to a family dinner and to see the empty seat, to see an unmade bed, an unslept in bed,

to see I know for our family in the coming weeks after our little girl had gone to be with Jesus, to see her bicycle sitting there, with the helmet still dangling from the handlebars.

There's just something about the ache you feel in your heart when you see that empty seat, when you have to deal with loss.

Now we use this phrase, the empty chair, the aching heart, and we do so, pulling it from where it originated in World War One,

which is where we began this journey this Easter weekend. Good Friday, we started our attention on Jesus' death with the picture in our minds of what has been called the Great War.

I was in a small group Bible study this week and someone said, has there ever been time as crazy as this time that we're living in, which is kind of always tempting when we're living through crazy times?

And I just had to stop and go, yes. And worse, there were 40 million casualties in World War One, 20 million dead, 21 million injured.

And by the way, those of you who have ever in any way served our country in the military, thank you. We honor you, we appreciate you.

It is with humble gratitude that we think of both those men and women who serve and also their spouses and family.

And then of course, that was the eclipse just 20 years later in World War Two where there was a staggering 60 million casualties.

And so we must always keep what we are facing in context to what the world has gone through and what God has brought people through.

But as we began on Good Friday talking about the power of a moment to change the world, the power of in that instance, the 11 o'clock hour on November 11, 2018 when the armistice was reached and the fighting ceased.

So people dying up until that moment in the clock rang out and of course things changed. And we used that as an illustration to begin our conversation about the cross, about that ultimate moment of change, about the clock striking 3 p.m. and Jesus giving up his breath and of everything changing on earth and in heaven forever at the death of Jesus.

But to stay in that frame of mind, I want you to understand because it's hard to get our heads around 20 million people who are killed.

So let's just think about Great Britain, just think about the United Kingdom for just a moment.

A staggering one in 10 men between the ages of 20 and 45 who lived in England were killed in World War One.

So just we sort of have a visual. If you are a man between the ages of 20 and 45 in your gathering today, church online today, you'll have to use an emoji. Raise up your hand.

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