Holy Week
If you’re feeling busy, excited about party plans, overwhelmed with details, and/or even some confusion, you’re in good company with the people hanging around Jesus during the original Passover week. They were ready for the biggest feast of the year (Passover) in the biggest city in their known world (Jerusalem). But the week didn’t go as they thought it would. Yet they stayed right in step with Jesus.
How can we keep staying right in step with Jesus this week?
1. Keep joining us in prayer at 10:10, praying the Lord’s Prayer.
We’ve been praying the Lord’s Prayer every day at 10:10, and I love that this alarm has caught me in the middle of all the normal things of life – driving, mid-meeting, playing with the kids. To stop and say in that moment, “...your name be honored as holy…” has been a significant reminder that this moment is the Lord’s. He’s with us all the time! It’s not too late to start. Just set a reminder on your phone for 10:10 and join us praying the Lord’s Prayer.
2. Make some space for silence.
There are more opportunities than I would have thought. We choose to pull out our phones and fill out all kinds of edge times, but I’ve found the silence and a deep breath to be so much more restorative than a game of Wordle. Try it this week! When you’re parked somewhere waiting, when a show has just ended, when the day has just begun, resist picking up the phone. Instead, take a deep breath and enjoy a moment of silence. I imagine the disciples setting up the Upper Room for dinner and having some moments of silence and anticipation, too.
3. Prep your soul for the weekend (not just the dinner or the eggs).
I’ll be preparing my soul for this weekend by experiencing the Good Friday Meditation Walk podcast the team recorded a couple years back. You can walk anywhere in about a half hour loop, and it’ll lend itself to experiencing the disciples’ walk through Thursday night up through the crucifixion and the disappointment and grief of Friday night. I think the height of our joy on Easter morning is often matched with the depth of our reflection on Friday. If we want to meet the disciples in their haste to run to the empty tomb on Sunday, consider being willing to join them in their walk home from Golgotha on Friday.
It’s an historically authentic experience to live into the preparation, anticipation, silence, grief and joy of Holy Week. And as I want to know the presence of God more richly and abundantly, I will press into this experience of those who have followed him and are following him still. I hope you’ll join me.
And of course I hope you and your neighbors will join us for Sunday’s Easter Celebration as we come to the feast of the King of Heaven! Bring those Lord’s Prayer cards if you have them as an offering of prayer to the Lord. We’ll be ready with music of praise, a word of confident hope from the Gospel of Mark, a special hunt for the kids, and even a piece of a feast to take home.
-Pastor Megan
