This week has great meaning for many Christians.
Churches will be full of visitors and others who make it a normal part of their week.
It is a serious week.
Soon we will experience the quiet Wednesday before everything begins to change.
Jesus understood and knew the magnitude of this time for him.
Just as when he was a little baby being born, laboring and struggling through the process of life.
This time he is laboring and struggling towards his death.
He knew it was a difficult death in fact in the garden he even pleaded with God, “Father, is there any other way?”
I can’t imagine him walking the pathways of crosses with those who had been placed there before him.
I can’t imagine the heart wrenching reality of all that would take place.
In the garden when he needed others to be with him, they moved to safety or even fell asleep.
It was a struggle as he worked through what was to come for him.
He knew it had to take place for the story to be fulfilled.
He was there from the beginning, and he knew he would be there to the end.
The middle part was the hardest.
Isn’t that kind of like life? The middle part is where it all happens then it’s soon over.
Nothing was a surprise for him.
The agony and the abandonment, the weight of so much on his shoulders, the week would be a multitude of emotions.
Through it all HE KNEW HE WOULD WIN.
But the process had to take place.
Just as the journey to Bethlehem for Mary and Joseph before birth was long and scary and often difficult.
The journey of the cross is not much different.
I would not want to be there.
When I was a little girl, I remember hearing the song, “were you there, when they crucified my Lord?”
NO, I would not want to be there. I want warm calm moments.
I cannot be around violent scenes or issues.
Every player in the journey to the cross had to play a part and be an important part of the plan.
They all had jobs to do even if they fully didn’t understand the role they played.
This week has great meaning for many Christians as we wait in the quiet.