by Lilly Lewin
How are you doing on this Holy Saturday?
Are you burned out by all the activities of Spring….holiday trips, sports, meetings.
Are you tired from all the service preps you’ve had to do for Holy Week to happen at your Church?
Are you still getting everything ready to make Easter happen for your friends and family? cooking, baking, cleaning etc.
Are you frustrated by the brokenness in our world and suffering around you?
This week, I’ve been using my coffee cup as a prayer tool to remember the events of Holy Week.
The Cup of Praise on Palm Sunday
The Cup of Extravagance for the Anointing at Bethany
The Cup of Change for cleaning out the Money Changers
The Cup of Betrayal for Judas and Peter.
The Cup of Remembrance on Maundy Thursday.
The Cup of Suffering of Good Friday.
Now we are at Holy Saturday…and my cup is empty. Like the Disciples, I feel a bit like hiding. I too am feeling the tears of Good Friday and not the cheers of Palm Sunday. I too have poured out more than I have taken the time to refill. My cup is EMPTY.
The EMPTY CUP
HOLD an empty cup today.
Consider the things that make you feel empty.
Fatigue, Burn out, Brokenness, Injustice, Fear, Anxiety , Illness.
What else?
What expectations have been unfulfilled?
What has disappointed you?
What things have left you empty?
What things have caused you sorrow?
What loss have you experienced this year?
What are you grieving today? Broken dreams? Broken relationships? Broken systems in our country that cause injustice?
Hold your empty cup
Feel it’s weight.
Notice the emptiness.
Talk to God about the emptiness, the loss, the sorrow.
Imagine that loss, sorrow, fatigue, brokenness , grief, anxiety filling this empty cup.
Allow God to have this cup.
You might even write down these things and put them into your cup and then give them to God to hold for you.
Place your cup in a the LIGHT. LET JESUS, LET GOD, hold your cup.
And don’t forget, this is the Sabbath; take some time to rest and allow God to restore you and get ready for a new day.
Listen to Andrew Peterson’s song
By Emily Huff —
Our family has been in a season of waiting for a number of years for God’s answer regarding our direction with work and calling. As we have prayed as a family for a new path, I’ve been thankful for prayers that remind me that this is in God’s hands, for prayers for a place to flourish, prayers for God to open the right door, and prayers for reassurance of God’s love throughout the journey.
It’s been said to me that we are experiencing a “Holy Saturday” through this waiting- the time in between the cross and the resurrection when Friday’s over but Sunday has not come yet.
This has been a longer road than expected. As a runner, I’ve compared this season to running a race that turned out to be more mileage than I signed up for. If I were told that I would be running a mile but then were told midway that I’m actually to be running a marathon, I would feel exasperated and weariness would set in. This “race” has had some bumps along the way, but we’ve seen grace show up in life in all its messy glory. While wrestling with God and crying out again and again for a new song to sing (Psalm 40), we’ve also seen God’s provision and faithfulness over and over.
As spring is just about to bloom here in Seattle, I look at the tulips and daffodils that are trying to make their grand entrance. These bulbs have been underground for a long time, and I’ve wondered if they are truly going to find their way through the dirt. It’s felt foolish to hope at times for things we are waiting for, but my brother-in-law told me that the word for wait and hope in Hebrew is the same in Isaiah 40:25-31. I am reminded that there is more going on that I cannot see, and I firmly believe God has been cultivating trust in our hearts.
Wendell Berry shares this wisdom, “We live the given life, not the planned.” This is not the path we would have chosen. Though this season, we’ve had a lot of practice trusting when we can’t see the whole picture. In some ways, it feels good that our faith muscles seem to be getting stronger as we are developing resilience and grit we did not have before. We have been able to stand back and celebrate the showing forth of God in unexpected places while also still asking, seeking and knocking the best we know how.
Theologian and professor of piano Jeremy Begbie says, “Music teaches us that just because there is silence doesn’t have to mean the silence is empty of void.” Music (and life, for that matter) need pauses. Holy Saturday at times seems like an unnecessary pause. I want to grieve on Good Friday and then to jump right to Easter morning for the celebration. However, the space in between can have a lot to teach us. While these pauses and turns in the road may be unexpected and even unwelcome at times, they can be filled with meaning and purpose.
So, as you find yourself in your own rendition of your “Holy Saturday,” may the roots of your faith grow deeper as you place your hand in His and keep running the race.
By Faith Eury Cho —
We call today Good Friday.
It is the day that commemorates the unfair treatment of our King. It is the day that remembers His betrayal, from His closest friends. It is the day when the world allowed Him to be wrongly accused. His reputation – trampled. His name – tarnished. His body – torn apart.
And yet, we call it good.
Usually when the Bible calls anything good it is when referencing the things of God and from God. Before sin invited a great curse upon our land, everything was good (Genesis 1-3). It was fruitful and whole. Nothing was broken. There was no suffering or pain. It was good.
Temptation is when we are faced with a possible redefinition of “good.”
The snake approached Eve with a new perspective. It says in Genesis 3:6, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it…”
The fruit was useful, beautiful, and pleasurable. It was everything that one would want for one’s life. To Eve, this became good.
The spoiler alert of this story is that there is nothing good apart from God. The beauty of the Garden was not in the way that it perfectly served Adam and Eve’s every need and desire. Rather, its beauty came from the Presence of God. It was a place where God’s Presence was so close that they could hear Him taking a walk in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8). God was in charge of this garden. That’s what made it good.
There are times, when my life as a minister and mother of four becomes overwhelming. Sometimes, the day doesn’t go as planned. Although there is much joy, there is also much pain. Once in a while, when someone asks me how my life is going, I take a brief moment to make an honest assessment. Occasionally, my response could easily be “too much,” or “unfair,” or “discouraging.” When circumstances are not easy or people are burdensome, the way I could easily describe my life is “not good.”
Yet, in moments like these, I make sure to take a second look into my life. Once I do, I see God’s gentle hands over every minute detail of it. I see the way He takes difficult situations and use them for His glory. I see how He brings victory into my battles, even in ways that I may not recognize at first. Sometimes, pain blinds us from seeing God in the midst of our lives. The way to heal that is gratitude. Gratitude reopens those blind eyes.
I am sure it was painful to watch Jesus on the cross on that fateful day.
His skin dangling around His wounds…
Thick blood dripping all over his face…
The smell of open flesh…
The torment in His groans…
The harsh, splintered wood that He hung on…
It was cruel and devastating. But, it was good – so very, very good. God was enacting justice in the midst of this injustice. His love for us was ever so palpable, even in this scene of hate. This execution is so good that it is forever a sign of pure love. The wood that His body hung on is now dangling as symbols around our necks, on the walls of our churches, and as bumper stickers on our cars.
There is no amount of pain that the world can inflict upon you that the goodness of God cannot overshadow.
It is this very reality that encourages us to see beauty in all seasons of life, whether easy or difficult. Therefore, next time there are things like loss, pain, or persecution, we know what to say if someone were to ask us how life is going.
It is good.
It is very good.
By Joy Lenton —
It’s Good Friday. We see Jesus: already battered, bruised and torn, making His stumbling progression to Calvary. He’s always been the One and only Son of God. He is also Chief Cornerstone and Shepherd of the flock. He is our Door and Way to Father God.
En route, He has made enemies. Not everyone understood His true identity or wanted a part of the Kingdom of God He preached. He also spoke to crowds hanging on His every word. Many witnessed miracles and fell at His feet. He was revered by those who loved Him and anointed with pure, fragrant nard in honour of His burial to come.
Jesus had bowed low, washing the disciples’ feet as Servant of all, warning them of what lie ahead and what to expect. They could barely comprehend what He said or why He, their Lord and Master, would demean Himself in this way.
One of His own betrayed Him with a kiss by selling his own soul for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus was arrested by Roman soldiers, flogged with 39 lashes, his skin flayed to ribbons, and treated with sheer cruelty and derision by those who saw Him as nothing more than a deluded individual, a menace to authority and a rebel who spoke as though he were a god.
Skies darken now and soon the bloodied, thorn and sword pierced, cross-nailed Man of Sorrows will exhale His last breath, willingly surrender Himself into the Father’s hands. Jesus will take the final step He came to earth to make. To die for our sin and for our sake. To set the captives free and restore us back to the Father’s side for eternity.
It’s the culmination of a journey the Messiah has made as Son, Shepherd and Servant-King. Before long, He will break free from the tomb in which He is laid, rise as our Saviour, ascend back to heaven’s glory and be recognised as God and Lord by all who place their faith and trust in Him. Hope awaits on the horizon…
Son, Shepherd, Servant, Saviour
The Holy Son who walked
in harmony close beside
Father God, cloistered now
inside an earthly frame, walks
as deity in human dust
and demons tremble at his name
The Shepherd of the sheep
made weak, becomes our
Lamb for the slaughter—now
cross-fodder—bleeding red
for every son and daughter
The Servant of all mankind,
humbled and humiliated, is
thrown now to dusty ground,
rejected and reviled by those
He came to love and save
The Saviour, risen Lord,
now ascended and adored
draws all mankind to him,
provides an open door
because he bore the full
penalty for our sin
©joylenton
“We must keep our eyes on Jesus, who leads us and makes our faith complete. He endured the shame of being nailed to a cross, because he knew that later on he would be glad he did. Now he is seated at the right side of God’s throne!” – Hebrews 12:2 (CEV)
**you can discover the meaning, history and etymology of Good Friday here**
By Lynn Domina —
Difference, Glorious Difference
We could have been alike. By “we” I mean all of us. We could have been imagined into being as multitudes of the same creature, each one of us identical, our DNA exactly the same, our appearances distinct only because that one spent more time in the sun, this one ingested less calcium as an infant, the other one failed to catch a ball and so has a scar on his cheek. We could have been called to duplicate each other in a preference for oranges over pears, basketball over football, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire over Jeopardy. Instead, we’re unique, our skin bronze or olive or ivory, our voices rumbling or breezy or hushed, our dominant responses patience or fear or nonchalance.
What was God thinking? Life would be so much easier if we all wore the same size shoe and so didn’t have to spend half a morning wandering from store to store, searching for a pair that was narrow enough at the heel and wide enough at the toes. If our taste buds were all the same, well-meaning friends could stop trying to foist brussel sprouts on us, convinced that in this recipe, we’d come to love them. Ditto tofu. Ditto oysters. And what was God thinking, creating us all so different and yet so opinionated? We argue about baseball teams, cookie recipes, whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or only from the Father, daylight savings time, guns, beer, abortion, rock and roll or rap, and who makes the best pancakes. Why didn’t God just create us as more similar and more agreeable?
As a writer myself, as someone who enjoys bringing poems and stories into being, creating something out of—if not nothing, then language alone, I appreciate the pleasure of creation. I like to imagine God’s joy and astonishment every time God brought something new into being—a three-toed sloth, a hippopotamus, a flowering cactus. The color blue and the color green and the color teal. Cinnamon, fennel, turmeric. People with freckles, people who can curl their tongues, people with bushy eyebrows. What diversity I imagine God thinking, what fun. When God called everything good, maybe God was thinking only about morality, but I think God was filled not only with satisfaction but with delight, observing all of creation, the yellow and purple, the light and darkness, the males and females. God called it very good our Bibles tell us, but I think God meant, “This is great!”
But, alas, of course, arguments ensued. Adam, Eve, the serpent, and their short debate followed by that first juicy bite of a Granny Smith. Cain, Abel, the grain, the flocks, Cain’s left hook, Adam’s corpse. If only God had created us to be alike rather than different, maybe we’d all still be living in paradise. Perhaps all this diversity is just a foolish result of a foolish decision.
Or not. Perhaps, as is so often true, we’re the fools. Some of us see difference and feel fear. Some of us feel anger. Some of us feel disgust. Others of us feel surprise or excitement or wonder. Let’s be like those people. God called all of creation good. Let’s receive it that way. Good. Good. Good.
By Idelette McVicker
There are few things as foolish as offering the task of spreading an eternal message—a revolutionary message—to women in a society shaped and ruled by patriarchy.
Women had no position, no place, no authority, no power.
We might even ask: What was God thinking? These women would not have been regarded as credible witnesses. The system around them dismissed their voices—no credibility here. They were nobodies in the eyes of their society. They did not have cultural, religious or political authority to spread a message to the ends of the earth.
The very act of telling women to carry this message, seemed hopeless and ridiculous.
Giving a woman an important message to share in a larger society, would have seemed like a death sentence to that very message. Kind of like a baby boy born during the time of Herod.
But the longer I walk this earth, the longer I know: the HOW matters as much as the what.
How a message spreads, to whom it is given, how it goes out into the world, how we walk with each other, how we talk to each other, how we have meetings, how we create conversations, how we move and flow matter as much as THAT we do these things.
The HOW carries power. The HOW shapes the message as much as the message itself. How matters.
If the HOW matters, was there great purpose in God trusting women with the message first? I believe God speaks through the how here, as much as through the very message itself.
In sending out a message of New Life and Resurrection into the world, God did not choose powerful lines of transmission. First, the message came to us as a baby, through the body of a woman. Then, when that message was crucified, the message of his resurrection wasn’t given to powerful orators and heralds. This message of Resurrection was trusted into the mouths of women.
Is it possible that the Resurrection message was also meant to resurrect the very story of those who carried the message? The carriers of this message of Resurrection needed their own societal resurrection. Resurrection to the story of women silenced, dismissed and diminished in patriarchy. Resurrection to lost dreams, lost hopes, lost power.
The message of Life was in their mouths. Resurrection was meant to reach through history, down the patriarchal lines, proclaiming resurrection to the past and all the way into the future. The One who proclaimed new life out of sin, gave this message also to penetrate and bring resurrection to the graveyards of patriarchy.
Good news for the world, was also good news for women.
Resurrection power was meant for the messengers, as much as for the hearers.
God didn’t just care that a message went out. God designed the story so the lines of transmission became prophetic conduits of the message. The messengers became the message.
But just like the women, whose words seemed like nonsense to some who heard it, the dismissal and ridiculing of Resurrection voices are still happening today.
When a woman tells her story of rape.
When black voices are crying out for resurrection in the justice system.
When a woman speaks up about abuse.
When indigenous voices rise to protect the land.
When LGBTQ bodies long for dignity and honor.
When refugees arrive.
When women are speaking up in hierarchical churches, crying out for ears to hear.
Jesus is still meeting the ones who most long for Resurrection. Jesus is still meeting us in places of death, dismissal and ridicule with this most beautiful and revolutionary message of Resurrection.
May we have eyes to see, ears to hear and mouths willing to carry this message.
__________________________________
Reflect:
- Will I have believed the women who told this ridiculous story of Resurrection 2,000 years ago?
- Where do I need to listen today?
- Who do I need to believe?
- Who are the messengers of Resurrection now?
Idelette McVicker is founder and Editor-in-Chief of SheLovesmagazine.com and Dangerous Women Tribe, curating community spaces for women to become strong in their faith and voice, working for peace and justice in the world. Together we learn and practice how we belong to each other.
As an Afrikaner woman, born and raised in South Africa during the Apartheid years, Idelette’s story has both wrecked her and shaped a longing in her heart for a more free and equal world, alongside a humble passion for anti-racist work.
After training as a journalist in South Africa, she lived in Taiwan where she wrote for daily newspapers. She moved to Canada in 1999 and now home truly is the world. Idelette travels and speaks around the world, seeking and witnessing God’s heart for healed and whole relationship.
Idelette is a writer, immigrant, mother of three and a restaurant wife. She loves Jesus, justice and living juicy.
Connect with her on Twitter at @idelette, Instagram (@idelettemcvicker), Facebook (Idelette) or her personal blog at Idelette.com
by Christine Sine
Yesterday was Palm Sunday that wonderful exuberant beginning to Holy Week which fills us with anticipation and hope. Yet we are in for a roller coaster ride. This week is the centre of our Christian identity. Yet it tugs our emotions in so many different directions. It begins with hope and expectation then plummets to death and despair only to rise again into resurrection wonder. I have written about this from various perspectives in the past, and found myself rereading these posts and thoughts as I began Holy Week this year.
First I reminded myself of how subversive Jesus’ walk through this week was. It does indeed reveal to us the evidence of God’s power which can topple empires and transform worlds. However, as I plant my garden and wait for the seeds to emerge, I also realize there is another story in Holy Week. It is the story of Jesus’s garden walk From Suffering to Resurrection. Adam and Eve’s story begins in paradise but ends in a place of suffering. Jesus walk reverses that. It begins in Gethsemane – a garden of suffering in pain, passes through death into a new creation, a new garden paradise of flourishing life.
I spent a good bit of time over the weekend designing and reflecting on a special altar for the week, one in which I have woven together themes of life and death – living plants, intertwined with dead branches and kelp still clinging to the rock on which it attached itself in life. there are several crosses on my altar – the most powerful of which is this Celtic cross with Christ surrounded by disciples.
Holy Week begins with a triumphant march, and shouts of Hosanna – help us, save us, set us free but it walks us through a journey in which death and life are intertwined. “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”John 12:24. Without death there can be no life. A seed dies in order to grow and it is fed with black gold, compost made from the death and decay of organic matter. Yet when a seed dies like this it does not produce just one seed but many. God’s pattern of flourishing life begins in death but results in abundance.
It seems to me that for many people Holy Week ends on Good Friday but that is not what we should dwell on. When we plant a seed, we don’t mourn and wail, we wait in joyful anticipation for the new life to emerge. Death is necessary for life to flourish. It nurtures fresh and vibrant life.
As we walk through Holy Week, I wonder what our eyes are focused on? What are we willing to put to death so that life can flourish in, around and through us. How willing are we to accept the cost of Easter and look beyond the pain and suffering as Christ did so that life can flourish?
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a small amount for purchases made through appropriate links.
Thank you for supporting Godspace in this way.
When referencing or quoting Godspace Light, please be sure to include the Author (Christine Sine unless otherwise noted), the Title of the article or resource, the Source link where appropriate, and ©Godspacelight.com. Thank you!