Holy Week Musings


I actually started writing (and musing over) this last year during Holy Week, but it didn't fully come together. Somehow the timing didn't seem right either. I wasn't going to pursue this, but I started feeling the Lord urging me to pick it back up and finish it. We know what Jesus accomplished and overcame for us through His crucifixion, death, and resurrection; He is our Passover Lamb. And, as believers, we are victorious through the Christ in us - the hope of glory. This is the foundation of our faith. In this blog post, I wrote how I believe all of this applies to living our everyday lives, especially the tough, painful days. So with that in mind, here are some of my thoughts about life, this week, and Jesus. He must have thought this is the right time to share it. - Michelle

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It's Holy Week - the time to observe and celebrate the passion of Jesus. It is the time we thankfully contemplate the pinnacle of our Christian faith, and it is a sacred and beautiful time.

Some are in overwhelming joy, peace, and contentment during this week, while others are in the middle of overwhelming pain, stress, and disappointment. Some are having the time of their lives while others are in the fight of their lives. And then many others find themselves oscillating somewhere in-between. 

I've been musing over such things. 

I've been thinking about how we live our lives in ways that are authentic and pleasing to the Lord, even when our life experiences are not so pleasant or what we dreamt or expected them to be. How do we go about living through the hardships of this life without becoming apathetic or bitter? How do we reconcile the goodness of God with the unjust, hurtful, traumatic things many of us go through?

Maybe it really isn't the time to ask such questions; perhaps this week should only be spent on magnifying the Christ and His Cross. Perhaps the focal point should be on more important things like redemption and reconciliation. Maybe all the other stuff can wait.

But isn't this why Jesus came in the first place? Didn't He choose to step into our collective world as well as our personal one? Doesn't this include our sorrow and our struggle? Isn't this week quintessential to all our other weeks? Aren't His scars and His story what ultimately give us hope for our own? 

I believe this is where the guts and the glory of the Gospel meet. 

I feel the sacredness of this week speaks to all our days - past, present, and future; even the days that are especially difficult, sad, lonely, messy, and ordinary.

I don't believe He came and established the Kingdom on earth and then left us to muddle through on our own. I don't think we're supposed to live our real lives every day of the year but pretend they don't exist on certain ones. I don't think we're necessarily supposed to have a carefree life either; that isn't reality. 

I do believe Jesus changed everything, though.

This is why I believe what we honor and celebrate this week carries us through all the other weeks. I believe His truth and grace are as much for the daily grind as for our eternal salvation. I believe He came for our promise, our purpose, and our pain. I believe this week isn't just a yearly affair, but an ongoing relationship we live and breathe and have our being in every single day. And I believe He lives and breathes with us in the ache, the ashes, and the tension of our lives as well as in the comfort, the beauty, and the ease. 

Black Saturday, as some call it, or the in-between day, was just as holy as Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, which tells me something. 

It tells me all of our days are important to Him. 

The Lord's passion doesn't end on Sunday with the culmination of Easter. Rather the whole life of Jesus, including His crucifixion, death, and resurrection, empowers us to live out our entire lives, and this is what makes the difference. It's not that we'll never go through anything; it's that we have a Savior, brother, and friend who walks with us when we do. 

Through our own betrayals, heartache, and suffering, we can find strength and solace in Him because of this week. In yielding all of ourselves to Him and His lordship, we can choose to live an authentic life in Him and with Him, which I think is also key to living entirely authentic lives with each other.

It is a holy matter when we give ourselves to the Lord. It's
a living sacrifice to the One who poured out His life for us. We can trust Him with our all because He freely gave us His. 

Jesus shed His blood for us and all the days of our lives; only He could. 

This is how we come into the Father's house and are forever connected with Him and each other. This is how we are beautifully knit together as the family of God, as His sons and daughters, as brothers and sisters. It happens through the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus. His rescue mission was and still is our saving grace. It is a gift, but it cost Him everything. It's the ultimate loving-kindness and mercy of God in action.

So, no, I don't believe this week is just an annual Christian reminder or heartfelt holiday. I don’t believe it’s only relevant on the Church calendar but not in our real and raw daily lives.

I believe it is the everlasting revelation and declaration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the forever good news amidst all the bad and the ugly.

I believe it is the perpetual unfolding of His power at work within us, accomplishing infinitely more than we could ask or think, even on the hard days.

I believe it is the exclamation point of the ongoing ministry of reconciliation through us, His ambassadors, despite the ups and downs.

I believe it is "the hope of glory" continually being made manifest in us, particularly when we are struggling.

I believe it is the growing display of His splendor or glory through us, the plantings of the Lord, including during our not so glorious times.

I believe it is the holy, eternal fuel if you will, that we've been given for overcoming, and for living this life, and certainly, the one to come.

And this is truly the stuff I believe He came for. This is what this week is all about.

Thank you, Jesus. I'm so grateful.

Michelle Holderman
Copyright © 2018

Photo Source: Pexels.com



For this is how much God loved the world—he gave his one and only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life. God did not send his Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it! John 3:16-17 (The Passion Translation)

So Jesus is the One who has enacted a new covenant with a new relationship with God [the Father] so that those who accept the invitation will receive the eternal inheritance he has promised to his heirs. For he died to release us from the guilt of the violations committed under the first covenant. Hebrews 9:15 (The Passion Translation)

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