A Heavy Holy Week (The Weight of the Wait)

A Heavy Holy Week (The Weight of the Wait)

Can you feel it? The weight of sin weighing more and more heavily on this world we live in. What used to seem subtle now feels flagrant. Pure evil is on display in blatantly obvious ways. It is wearying, because it is so weighty.

But take heart, heaviness leads to holiness.

Those who cried of “Hosanna,” which literally means “save us,” on Palm Sunday, shouted “Crucify Him” days later. It’s a heaviness too hard to explain, and yet it leads to a holiness that will forever remain. He sealed the deal with a empty tomb at the end of a heavy, Holy Week.

The weight of the wait during Holy Week leads to the weight of Glory when our joy will be made complete. Jesus waited through the last week of His earthly life with the weight of His Father’s plan so heavy on His heart because it was all in His hands.

The triumphal entry on Palm Sunday led to the triumphal victory on Resurrection Sunday. Jesus’s final days. His cruel journey to the cross. His passionate plea with his final breath, “Father, forgive them.” His temporary time in the tomb giving way to eternal life because He triumphed over it all, once and for all, to deliver us all from sin, forgiving us for what had been harshly put on Him, reconciling us to the Father once again.

A story so heavy. A story so Holy. A story our finite minds will never fully comprehend, and yet our heavy hearts experience the weight of the wait again and again.

His sacrifice paid the ultimate price to lift that eternal weight off you and me. He set us free, if we just believe.

Same story. Same outcome. Same power. Same HOPE. A story that was foretold, fulfilled, retold, and revealed — giving NEW LIFE & HOPE to all who believe and are set free from sin.

Heavy and Holy. A wait in which the weight of our sin gives way to the weight of Glory.

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What's So Good About Good Friday?

What's So Good About Good Friday?

I’ve always been confused by the name given to this day — GOOD Friday. Really?

What’s so good about the devastating, unfair, cruel act we remember on this day? Jesus was mocked and scorned, beaten beyond recognition, and crucified as a criminal when the only thing He was guilty of was loving those who hated him and forgiving those who hurt him.

Why then do we call it GOOD? Well, the longer I walk with Jesus, the more I’m seeing the GOOD in this day. And to sum up several years of searching scripture and a plethora of journal pages of processing through it all...

There can be no resurrection without death. There can be no victory without a battle. There can be no growth without growing pains. GOOD is made better on the other side of the bad.

GOOD Friday set the stage for the GOOD News that was coming. Jesus said, “It is finished,” and breathed his last human breath (John 19:30). Many that day thought those final words and that final breath would be the final act, and the curtain would close.

Three days later, however, that curtain would re-open, because, literally, the curtain of the temple had been torn in two at the very moment of Jesus’ death (Mark 15:38). And when that curtain re-opened, it was a “curtain call” that moved all of Heaven and earth to applause as it revealed the BEST version of GOOD we will ever experience — death defeated that we might have life! Jesus lived, died, and rose again so that we might live abundantly and eternally with Him!

And that’s the very best kind of GOOD there could ever be if you ask me!

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