Entering Holy Week

Lord, You told your disciples: "If someone wants to follow Me, they must deny themselves, carry their cross and follow Me." In Your Name we pray: Lord, help us to take up our cross and follow you.

You stood before Pilate. You were condemned to death, while Your Words were rejected and Your Innocence scorned.

Protect us from rejecting Your Word, which is full of truth and redemption.

You carried your cross because You loved us, because you loved the whole world.

Help us to carry our cross, because we love you and we want to love the whole world like You do.

The weight of the cross was the weight of our sins, those sins that make us stumble and fall.

In our weakness we come to You for strength.

Even though You were suffering, You still reached out and cared for your mother.

Please make it so that the cross that we bear doesn’t hinder us from seeing the people around us.

When You struggled to carry your cross, they forced a passer-by to carry it for You.Make us willing, like Simon, to carry the burdens of those around us that are suffering.

Others also risked standing by You.

Strengthen our faith so that we are able to care for our brothers and sisters in You.

The burden of sin rested heavily on Your Shoulders while You stumbled along the way of the cross.

Forgive, Lord, the sin that makes us stumble and fall.

Your suffering on the way to Golgotha made the woman of Jerusalem weep.

Give that our suffering in this life may be taken up into your suffering on the way of the cross.

The full burden of our sins shattered You.

Please do not let us continue in our sin, but cause in us regret and faith.

Exposed and mocked, You endured the humiliation without protesting.

Make us humble in everything that we do and experience daily.

Nailed to the cross, You took your place between the condemned.

Please be with us as sinners, and bring us with You into paradise through our faith.

When your sacrifice was complete, You surrendered Yourself into the hands of the Father.

Keep us always close to your cross and your death, now and in the hour of our death.

True friends and dedicated women took care of your body.

Make us true and dedicated in our care for your body here on earth.

In the grave You were laid down, but from that grave You were resurrected.

Be the Lord of the resurrection for us as well as everyone else that belongs to You.

Lord Jesus, because of the cross and your suffering we were absolved, our sins were washed away and our relationship with You was restored. And so we thank You for the cross and for the depth of your love for us. Help us to carry our cross in this world, to follow You until we walk with You into the Kingdom of God, where You reign together with the Father and the Holy Spirit – one God, now and forever more.

Amen.

Risen indeed!

He is not here!

“The story of Easter is the story of God’s wonderful window of divine surprise.” – Carl Knudsen

“There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou – Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.” – Emily Bronte

“Easter is not a time for groping through dusty, musty tomes or tombs to disprove spontaneous generation or even to prove life eternal.  It is a day to fan the ashes of dead hope, a day to banish doubts and seek the slopes where the sun is rising, to revel in the faith which transports us out of ourselves and the dead past into the vast and inviting unknown.” – Author unknown (as quoted in the Lewiston Tribune)

He is risen!

“The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world.  Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice.  But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.” – Henry Knox Sherrill

“Ye sleeping buds, break
Open your green cerements, and wake
To fragrant blossoming for His sweet sake.” – Margaret French Patton

Milk and honey

Easter – our blessed reminder and most significant time of year – is approaching fast. By this time next week we will (should?) be right in the middle of the weekend’s remembrances. The Passover lamb now only a memory, a sacrifice made obsolete by the Lamb of God. The door, left open at the end of every Passover Seder as a symbol of their expectant hope for the arrival of the Messiah, no longer necessary – the Messiah and the Kingdom are already near…are here…

Thoughts that enliven me with thankfulness and a re-ignited passion, as I’m sure many of you are, too. Because when I am again confronted with what exactly God was willing to do to reach me, I realise that the sky should be the limit where my life for God is concerned. But this passion and these best of intensions are so often exactly like New Year’s resolutions – they last as long as the feast does…we are inspired to do more, as we should be, only to then fall back into our routine faith – our biggest (only?) desire the desire to be comforted each Sunday…is that the Kingdom of God that Jesus planned? That He gave His everything for?

“So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God…Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God….You are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you- from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted…Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives.” – 1 Peter 2:1-11

Yes, the basics are important – we need to start out with comfort and security…with milk…but we cannot stay there…for if we stay there we cease to grow. Milk, the desire to be comforted, should only be our BEGINNING; and not the end we have made it to be. Yes a firm foundation is absolutely essential – sound knowledge of God’s being and what He has done – but a building is not built only to look at, it is meant for living in and around, as the provider of shelter and comfort and a safe space. 

The laying of the foundation, our new identity as living stones in God’s house, has to have life-altering consequences – for ourselves, yes, but even more so for the people who surround us everyday. A building can only really “be” a building if it’s serving its purpose…we can only really “be” the faithful if our lives become less about ourselves with every day we are given. “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”  - Ghandi

May this Easter be the push we need. May we become the faithful Jesus envisioned while giving all of Himself.