HOLY WEEK
Holy Week refers to the 8 days between Palm Sunday and Easter. Palm Sunday is this coming Sunday and begins the week where we walk with Jesus to the cross, through his death and into the joyous celebration of his resurrection on Easter Sunday.
It is a somber week beginning and ending with celebration. The days grow darker until the light is completely gone, and it is dark from Good Friday until the dawn of Easter Sunday. This is a week of focusing on Jesus as each day he takes a step towards the unimaginable pain that awaits him as he takes the punishment for our sins.
There are several ways to do that. One way is to consider an event that occurred during that week and place yourself in that story. For example, Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables and displaying great anger at their presence in his Father’s house. Place yourself with in that story. What might you feel if you were a disciple, a money changer, a rabbi or one of the people in the crowd? What do you see and feel? How might that change depending on whose perspective you are viewing what is happening? There’s the story of the cursed fig tree, Jesus being anointed in Bethany, Judas agreeing to betray Jesus, the Last Supper, Gethsemane and then the day of his crucifixion. Each day consider what does this tell you about the love of Jesus and the Father for you.
Another way is using the short devotional that is attached. Each day begins with prayer, a short description of the the event of the day, followed by scripture readings and an opportunity to reflect on what you have read.
You can also continue with the Lenten Guided Prayer either on its own or combined with one of the above ideas. If you find that helpful.
It is up to you if you would like to do any of the above or if you have another way of walking this final road with Jesus on the way to the cross. The how isn’t the point so much. Rather my hope is that you will take some time each day, even 15 minutes, to consider what Jesus has gone through for you. Consider the heart of Jesus. His love for us is reflected in every significant step to the cross.
May we sit in silence with the sudden awareness that it was for our sin that he hung on the cross. It is his continuing, unchanging, incomprehensible love for us that he chose to enter Jerusalem, knowing doing so would lead to his death. He died so that we might be saved from our own sin and to set us free to become new people and to be reconciled with God.
I pray that this week will be meaningful to you. That your spirit will be lifted up and filled to the brim with the knowledge of what Jesus did for you. I pray that you will experience God’s love for you again and be restored. I pray that through this week you will remember who you are (a new creation in Jesus) and whose you are, God’s.
ALAS! AND DID MY SAVIOUR DIE
Alas! And did my Saviour bleed, and did my Sovereign die?
Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?
Was it for sins that I have done he groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree!
Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut its glories in
when Christ, the mighty Maker, died for his own creature’s sin.
Lift Up Your Hearts, pg. 172. words by Isaac Watts, 1977
16 God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.
17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people.
He sent him to save them!
John 3:16, 17. Contemporary English Version