With Sunday’s palm processional we will enter into the week called Holy. In biblical language the word holy essentially means  “significantly different”; a week unlike any other. And indeed it was, and annually is.

Holy Week is perhaps the clearest call on the Christian calendar to pay attention to what Jesus and those around him did, and generously apply those insights and instructions to our life and faith. It was a week of contrasting emotions where unbridled joy and unspeakable grief held hands and walked together. It was a week of purposeful sacrifice, though it seemed that only the One prepared to sacrifice it all understood. It was a week of conviction as He cleared the temple and judged the hearts of the smug and the greedy, and it was one of consolation as He showed the tenderest of mercies to folks as distant as a thief on a cross and as up close and personal as his own mother. Hallelujah, what a week. What a savior.

In the life of FBC, there are three worship opportunities in which we will turn our eyes and hearts toward the ‘bout-to-be risen Lord. We begin with Palm Sunday, a joyful welcoming of Christ. On Thursday evening we will observe a Maundy Thursday service marking the anniversary day of the Last Supper. We will share communion and the symbolic act of hand washing will draw us into the moment. Things go quiet here on Good Friday and Holy Saturday – two days who names seem oddly misfitting. Sunday’s coming, as the preacher said, but not here yet.

In this season, the weight of grief and sin will give way to the victory that conquered them both. We can say more about that in the days ahead. But for now, walk the last leg of Lent with full attention on why the resurrection was possible and even necessary. Remember that his sacrificial bent to put the needs of all others above his own is, at least in part, a call of us to do the same. As we do, Easter will mean even more; if we will let it. May it be so.