Dear Friends,
As we approach Palm Sunday and the events of Holy Week, I want to encourage you to take the time to once again read this story. It is so well known, we can almost become complacent with it, but it is so important to read this again and again and not take a single part of it for granted but let the wonder of the cross hit us afresh. Allow yourself to become part of the story as you immerse yourself in it – for you surely are part of the story!
As you read, where are you as the crowd waves palm branches? Where are you when Jesus raises Lazarus and the woman anoints his head? Are you watching on as Jesus shares a meal with his disciples – can you smell the food? What is the atmosphere in the room? What are your feelings when you see Jesus stoop and wash his disciples feet? Are you there in the Garden of Gethsemane seeing the sweat like drops of blood fall from Jesus as he cries out to his Father in anguish; but then the calmness as he accepts ‘Your will not mine’? I believe it was here that the battle was won – no longer in the balance, but resolute, as Judas comes and greets him with a kiss.
Then, the barbarity of the whipping, the blood, the flesh torn from his body, the crown of thorns pushed cruelly onto his head. Finally the grief of seeing his body nailed and raised on a cross.
We worship the one who is risen but who endured all that for us. As you read it again in these coming weeks linger on the scenes and tell yourself – he did that for you and if you had been the only person who ever lived, he would still have done that for you.
With love,
Jane