I don't know enough about the Catholic beliefs and, honestly, I am not one for a lot of ritual type behavior but this year I was curious about why? Why Ash Wednesday? Why Lent? Why give up something during Lent? Part of this was driven by the need in my heart to make sure that the Resurrection Celebration on Easter Sunday carried meaning for me this year. It seems like sometimes I have gotten lost in the routine of Good Friday Communion and Easter services being really spectacular and forgotten that I need to reflect on what Christ accomplished in the spiritual battle we all face.
Therefore, I decided to give something up for Lent – but I felt like instead of just giving it up Monday to Saturday and enjoying it on each Sunday until Easter, that I would give it up completely. It was interesting to cause myself to reflect on Christ, His journey, His sacrifice and His victory every time that I thought of having a hot delicious cup of coffee. I reflected more upon Christ throughout these last 46 days than I normally do and it really changed how I was thinking about Resurrection Sunday.
Additionally, we hosted a Journey to the Cross during what the Catholic Church would call Holy Week or Passion Week (that week between Palm Sunday and Easter).
This allowed me to reflect upon the events that filled Jesus' last days. I was fascinated by the choices that Jesus made during that last week to ingrain some events into the minds of His disciples. I remembered that Jesus knew, all along, what was coming and when. In fact, John 13:1 says, "It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father." If you KNEW that you had less than a week to live – how would you spend it?
Then came Communion – mind you – two months ago when we started talking about this week and Communion, I was bummed. It did not excite me. So I paused and asked myself, "Why?" and the answer was that it seemed to have lost some of the meaning. So, we simplified, shortened and created a service for Communion that was designed to keep us focused on remembering what Christ accomplished…and it worked!
Then yesterday – WOW! Looking at what the Word of God says about the extravagant love of God! Extravagant - "going beyond what is deserved or justified." The perfect word to describe God's love for man in sending Christ. He loved the whole world sooooooooo much (John 3:16) that He showed it to us by the sacrifice of His Son (Romans 5:8) and purchased us at a very expensive, personal and demanding price (Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 7:23). Now that is extravagant AND that is why my Easter was the best ever! Plus – one of the people that I prayed for to yield their life to Jesus Christ did – at the end of the service yesterday! New life on a day that we celebrate new life!
How could it be any better?
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