It’s Holy Week, themes written about week of Jesus’ life. John’s gospel dedicates 9 chapters to its events, Matthew 6, and people have been writing about it ever since. As I mentioned in my Meditation Monday: Walking with Friends Through Holy Week I love to look at Holy Week from different perspectives. It helps keep Jesus’ journey towards the cross fresh and compelling. It encourages me to consider new aspects of the journey and explore new facets of Jesus’ life and ministry. I have written about The Subversive Walk of Holy Week and the Garden Walk of Holy Week, two posts I love to revisit each year. This year however, still filled with the glow of celebrating a good friend’s 80th birthday a week ago, I am pondering the close community of friends who walked with Jesus through his final days. There are quite a few of them yet we rarely think about how much Jesus valued their support, even when they fell asleep, ran away or doubted him.
Yesterday I read another very compelling view of Holy Week. Scott Erickson, who I interviewed for the last Liturgical Rebels episode, collaborated with Nadia Bolz Weber, to consider the last words of Jesus’ life. Scott created a Cross with images of each word which Nadia took to the prison where she works as chaplain and asked the inmates to write comments. Talk about compelling. It provided a new and very important perspective on these last words Jesus spoke.
As you walk through Holy Week I encourage you too to think about aspects of Jesus life you have not considered before. 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?
In her Freerange Friday – Begin Holy Week With Our Cup, Lilly Lewin used one of my favourite analogies – a cup – to reflect on as we enter Holy Week. “Pick out a cup to pray with today. Consider what the cup of your life is like. Hold your cup and consider what’s been filling your cup this week.” Don’t forget to visit her website and download Praying With Your Cup For Holy Week.
On Thursday June Friesen in Let Go Let God, discussed not only our need to let go, but God’s too. I appreciated the ways she talked about the times God let go throughout history beginning with Adam and Eve and ending with Jesus.
Dianne Woodrow’s Clean Monday is also worth reflecting on. As she says: Aren’t we good at finding plausible excuses? Yet the Bible has much to say about not putting off to tomorrow what you can do today. I thought there were only one or two but Open Bible has collected 46!!! Forty six bible verses that pertain to doing things when you say you’ll do them and not putting them off! Oh My Goodness!!!! That has certainly surprised me.
Tomorrow we will publish the 4th episode of The Liturgical Rebels podcast, a delightful interview with artist Kreg Yingst about his journey as a block print artist and his approach to combining art and faith. It was fascinating to chat to him and I think you will really enjoy this. Don’t forget to subscribe to The Liturgical Rebels wherever you listen to podcasts, so that you can hear each episode as it is published. Make sure you listen to the first 3 episodes before listening to this one.
We are still having issues with the godspacelight website. Our apologies for the broken links which make our resource lists more difficult to access. This week, I am moving much of my activity to Substack. We will continue to post on the Godspacelight blog, but less frequently. We will also maintain the resource lists. There are several reasons for this. First security changes make posting and sharing to social media more difficult than it used to be. Second, it is harder than it used to be for people who access posts through social media to find them. It is increasingly frustrating to share and then have people tell me they have not seen articles. Third, I have people constantly share my prayers, poems and articles without acknowledging me as the author. I know that my inspiration comes from God, which is why I like to share freely, but I do like to be recognized. Fourth, it is becoming more expensive to run the blog because all these necessary changes cost money. I contribute $10,000 to $20,000/ year to run Godspacelight with little compensation. On Substack there is opportunity for you to support my ministry if you use it regularly and benefit from it.
These broken links are the ones for posts within Godspacelight. Links for other sites still work. If you want to access Godspacelight posts use the search option. Usually if a Godspacelink is broken you can just put the title into search and get to the page.
Here are some links to our resource list
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
Holy Week With Kids
Stations of the Cross
Easter Sunday
Many blessings on you as you walk through Holy Week. Here is a prayer that Carol Dixon wrote in response to my Meditation Monday.
Walking through Holy Week
This year
I walk through Holy Week
With friends who are grieving
The loss of a loved one…
Jesus is with us.
I walk through Holy Week
With friends who are ill or infirm
And cannot walk…
Jesus is with us.
I walk through Holy Week
With friends who are too busy
To even notice
Jesus is with us.
I walk through Holy Week
With friends who struggle
To deal with the world’s problems…
Jesus is with us.
This year
I walk through Holy Week..
With Jesus.
(c) Carol Dixon
Christine Sine
On May 11 from 10 am to 12 pm PT (check my timezone) We will discuss connections between community, spirituality and gardening. Explore the wonderful ways that God and God’s story are revealed through the rhythms of planting, growing and harvesting as well as the beauty of nature. This webinar is for anyone who admires the beauty of God’s good creation, likes to walk in nature, sit by the ocean or just relax and listen to the birds in the trees. It is based on Christine Sine’s popular book, To Garden with God and each participant will receive a digital copy of this book.