Holy Week

It’s Holy Week. When I try to take in all that this means, I’m completely overwhelmed and nearly speechless. Each Monday morning, we get up and start a new week. Many of us report to work. Some of us moms roll out of our jammies and into our yoga pants. Others begin more difficult tasks this week. Fighting an illness. Saying goodbye to a loved one. Packing up a former chapter of life. When Jesus began his week, his difficult final week, I wonder what he thought, how he felt. I’m one of those people who is actually grateful not to know the day of my death. If I knew that I was starting out my last week of life, I wonder how I would live. Jesus, knowing what he must do at the week’s end, turned his face toward Jerusalem and walked right into his death, through a choice of his own will. I wonder, what on earth possessed Jesus to do something like this? What was he thinking?! I know the answer; it’s love. He was thinking about me. And about you. When I really take time to soak that in and to think about Jesus as a man, walking willingly into the sacrifice that he made, I’m just blown away. It’s the most beautiful love story ever written. A man, with so much love for his bride, that he gave up his life in perhaps the most brutal way possible, just so that he could save her. What an epic love story.

If that wasn’t enough to blow me away, my mind then shifts to what Jesus accomplished through his death. Tears flow as I realize how my life is changed because of his sacrifice. I am to benefit from his suffering and sacrifice. I am privileged to know God because of Jesus. My life can have meaning because of Jesus. How I am loved. I wish that I lived with this knowledge in the forefront of my mind every minute of every day. It is the grand scheme. We’re always talking about the grand scheme of things. Well, this is it. This is what makes everything else hold together and make sense in a deeper sort of way, even if it looks crazy . I get so wrapped up in the little stuff, the stuff that doesn’t matter. If I could live everyday with a clear knowledge of what price was paid for my life, maybe I could focus less on myself, on the little stuff that doesn’t matter and give my all, run my guts out, for the race that does matter. So many people need Jesus. They need to know that he died for them because he loves them.

Today I simply want to honor my Jesus. I want to honor my hero, to lift high his name. He is my Savior, and without him, I would be nothing.