Holy Week

This Sunday, we celebrate Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. Holy Week is something that most Christians from our faith background are only peripherally aware of – with names like Maundy Thursday and Good Friday faintly ringing a bell in our minds; but holding no real or meaningful significance.

I want to challenge us as we move into this week before Easter to find time to appreciate and connect with the beauty and meaning within each day of this week.

For one thing, most of us typically live our lives in a sort of haze; moving from appointment to appointment, routine to routine, without truly being present in any moment, conversation, or situation. We are unaware of the opportunities and open doors all around us to show love, serve others, or make a meaningful connection that God can use to enter into our lives and bring His goodness and light into the darkness that surrounds us.

The Enemy wants to keep us isolated and hypnotized in this haze, but Holy Week is the perfect time to stop, listen, open our eyes, and accept God’s invitation to be present with us wherever we go and whoever we encounter.

Each day of Holy Week is another opportunity to reflect and remember that our Lord and Savior walked a path through the world we live in. He ate food with people, He had conversations with people, He woke up and went to work, He prayed and wept and laughed and moved and acted…all with an intention and purpose.

Holy Week invites us all to remember that the hands of Jesus that broke bread, reached out to the hurting, embraced the ones He loved, and then were nailed to cross are not so different from ours. This is the week when we are invited to remember that the love and purpose that drove Jesus forward on HIs mission of love to others is the same love that lives on inside of us.

So, the challenge is, on each day of this Holy Week take time to reflect and remember what Jesus was doing during this last week leading up to the Cross and the Empty Tomb. Remember that the Son of God who was present in our world is STILL present in the world around us; and most importantly embrace the open doors all around us to carry on His sacred and beautiful work of being the walking, talking, breathing examples of God’s faithfulness, goodness, and love!