Early this Palm Sunday morning, I climbed to the top of Mount Hermon with two dozen or so other attendees of the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. Quiet darkness covered us as we started, the air gradually lightening to pale gray as we hiked through the redwoods. Then, at the top, there it was—the cross.
We prayed together, shared a bit, then a few of us lingered while others started back down. After praying a little more, I sat next to a new friend on a bench near the foot of the cross, quiet in the pearly dawn, thinking, listening. Then a fiery yellow-white glow shone at the horizon, and the sun rose, quicker than I expected, dazzling our eyes, gilding the sky as I stepped back to snap a picture.
The cross and the sunrise. Somehow it captures what this week is about.
It’s Holy Week. It was fairly easy to remember, that morning on a dawn-lit hilltop, or in the Palm Sunday service later when the camp director played this week’s story so powerfully through organ and “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” But now, back amid the bustle and busyness of everyday life, I haven’t been thinking about it much.
Today is Maundy Thursday. Tomorrow, Good Friday. Then Saturday, the “waiting day.” And then…
I want to remember. To remember that this is when it happened, when He did it, when we are reminded that He still does it. When God showed once for all that we could never truly question how much Jesus loves us or whether He cares. I want to join the confused disciples with sinking hearts at the Passover meal, to stand with those with world turned upside down and hearts breaking at the cross, to follow the tear-blinded women to His tomb. I want to go where God showed once for all that He can take the ultimate evil and turn it for good…and that He loves us. He loves us, and no matter what, the victory is His.
Wherever you are today, whatever joy or anguish is stretching your heart, and whether you know Jesus yet or not, may you come to the cross this Easter week. May you come to the empty tomb. And most of all, may you come to Jesus, the crucified and risen One.
I hope to meet you there.
