Follow along: Holy Week readings.

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Here some helpful tools for tracking the words and works of Holy Week. Spanning from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday (Easter), we see the life of Jesus on display in and around Jerusalem. The plot thickens as His life mission will climax in his agonizing death, leading to His triumphant resurrection. He truly laid death in His grave, conquering all His enemies (sin, death, and Satan). Our hope is in the One who for love gave up His life so we may live. The innocent died in place of the guilty, the just for the unjust, in order to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18).

Let us remember the words of our Lord:

“This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father.”

—John 10:17-18, The Message

See It

Visual graphic of the events of Holy Week on a timeline (via BibleGateway.com). It is a visualization of the ‘Who,’ ‘What,’ and ‘Where’ of Holy Week.

For example, to below is a closeup of the chart showing Jesus in Gethsemane and his betrayal by Judas. First Jesus draws aside Peter, James, and John and entreats them to pray while Jesus also prays. Then Judas and a crowd arrive; Judas betrays Judas with a kiss, Jesus is arrested, and the disciples flee, while Peter and John follow at a distance. The visualization shows you the main actors in the story and provides Bible references for you to read the story yourself.

[click image to enlarge]

Read It

Justin Taylor has attempted harmony/chronology of the words and actions of Jesus in the final week of his pre-resurrection life (with help from the ESV Study Bible). Here are links, organized by day:

 

Download all of the Scriptures above compiled into one PDF document: Holy Week Timeline (37 pages).

Also, see the geography and harmony of Holy Week re-enacted in Google Earth.

Let this week be full of contemplation, and consider the great cost of God the Father crushing God the Son, to reconcile us and the world to Himself.

 

Deo Volente — trust God and do the next thing.

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Deo Volente is Latin for “God willing.” The idea comes from James’ pen:

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
—James 4:13-17

My wife has counseled countless ladies on the simple principle of trusting God and then do the next thing. Obey in the small task or responsibility right in front of you. Especially when confused, depressed, or at a loss of God’s voice. We know His will; it’s what He placed before us. Then He will reveal His heart and will to us more and more, as we joyfully obey from the heart.

[Thanks to a friend for sending me a text, signing off with Deo Volente.
Helped me make sense of God’s will right in front of me.]

 

The Name of Victory.

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“[God] raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. 21 Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world [age] but also in the world [age] to come.” —Ephesians 1:20-21, NLT

A question for you: How can Jesus rule over something both present and future?

He is not limited in the ways we are. We have a hard time reigning over our emotions during the morning commute.

The Present Age is where sin reigns and everything is disintegrating.

It began with the Fall in Genesis 3; as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, they experienced spiritual alienation from God, emotional alienation within, social alienation from others, and physical alienation from creation. (They were defeated and dejected in every area of life, in place of where they were created to experience joy, peace, and harmony.)

In other words, the present age is when everything is falling apart (eventually) — spiritually and emotionally, socially and physically. Social alienation from one another, and physical alienation from nature/the created world.  (Psalm 96 helps us see  about what the created world will experience when all things are made right and God heals it.)

The Age to Come will be where total victory is complete. It is both when and where,’ in that when Christ fills all things and we are complete in Him, and the whole created order has been judged and redeemed, then we will be fully in God’s glorious presence.

When Jesus came to earth He brought the power of the age to come, so we can experience it now. In Ephesians 2:6 we read that when we are in Christ we are now seated with Him (in the place of victory we will enjoy in the age to come). Victory is eventual and future, but it is now present and real. We stand in victory as we stand in Christ, for He stands in total victory.

Right now we live between these two ages. We see glimpses of what ‘shall be,’ and even hope for that world to enter our world. The only way we will live with the hope of the world to come is if we are enthralled with the One who is our Victory. Jesus won the fight against sin, Satan, and death. He purchased the life to come by completing the life that is. He is the one we believe in. Our imperfect faith is in the Perfect Savior. As Tim Keller reminds us, “We are not saved because of the quality of our faith but because of the object of our faith.”

Jesus is the one who has redeemed, is redeeming, and one day will redeem all things according to His good pleasure. We cannot want one aspect of this without the others. So, for the person who ‘trusts’ Jesus for eternal life but lives as if this life is all there is — that person does not have Jesus ruling over his or her life. (He is not actively saving this person today, so has this person been saved? Seems like that person will go on trusting in their decision to believe in Jesus, but not actually believe in Jesus.) For that person there is no victory now, so how shall there be victory awaiting in the life to come?

When we recognize how we are alienated from God (in every way possible) through own own choices and desires, and that this dysfunction leads our social alienation from others whom we were designed to love, we will come to realize how broken our whole lives really are. We will begin to recognize what an emotional wreck we are (I am). So, we turn to Jesus. Today. Right now. And again this afternoon, and tomorrow morning. Every day, and every moment we recognize our continual need. We’re disintegrating. He is bringing us back together, reconciling us to God and making us whole.  He is our victory. He rules our hearts today. One day He will right all things and rule the world the way it’s meant to be.

That’s how He is able to rule all things in this age and in the age to come.

(Some of these notes from Gospel in Life — Witness: An Alternate City)
Photo Credit: lucianotb

 

That’s who I am.

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“[Jesus’] self-awareness is startling. No other human teacher has made anything like the claims he makes. There are plenty who have said, ‘I’m the divine consciousness.’ But they think of the divinity as being in all of us, in the trees and the rocks and the human spirit. Jesus, however, understands that there is a God who is uncreated, beginningless, infinitely transcendent, who made this world, who keeps everything in the universe going, so that all the molecules, all the stars, all the solar systems are being held up by the power of this God. And Jesus says, That’s who I am.“

—Timothy Keller, The King’s Cross, pp. 43-44

 

 

Secret Gifts.

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One Thousand Gifts

In the most recent NY Times best seller list of hardcover advice & misc. category, #10  is The Secret (the “Law of Attraction” as a key to getting what you want) while #7, One Thousand Gifts has a much different theme. That book is all about gratitude, which isn’t about getting what we WANT; it’s on becoming who God designed us to be through continual gratitude. We attract God’s will by living each moment in the present, grateful for all things.

 

In reality, the secret to a successful life of joy and purpose comes not through greed (even attracting self-defined ‘good things’). The secret is gratitude.

Having read much of both books, I can highly recommend one [a thousand times over] but not the other.

 

The implications: my death in Him.

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“I wanted to cling to one part of the gospel: His death for me. I don’t want to grapple with the implications of my death in Him. I don’t want to have to wrestle with my doubts about my own resurrection. I just want Him to forgive me, help me, give me heaven on earth. Keep my family safe and healthy, happy and secure. And bless my work for Him. I want life without death.

But Jesus gives life through death.”

—Rick McKinley, A Kingdom Called Desire: Confronted By the Love of a Risen King, p. 53.

 

Tomorrow: go without shoes.

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Because millions of kids go everyday without shoes, as I mentioned last week.

Why all the fuss? Who needs shoes?

TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie says that not having shoes puts kids at a heightened risk of injury, disease and infection. Among the soil-transmitted risks that most can’t afford to prevent and treat are:

  • Hookworm: Causes anemia, stunted physical and mental development and, on occasion, congestive heart failure. Affects up to one-fifth of the world’s population.
  • Podoconiosis or “mossy foot disease”: Causes swelling of the feet and legs due to prolonged exposure to certain types of irritant soil.
  • Chiggers: Bites on the feet and ankles from these mites can cause severe itching and hives.
  • Tetanus: Potentially fatal infectious disease caused by bacteria entering the body through cuts or other open wounds. Causes painful muscle spasms and locked jaw.

Want to give?

Our family supports the intentional Gospel-driven work of great organizations such as World Vision, Compassion, Africa New Life (Rwanda), and Open Arms (Kenya). We intentionally focus on the needs in Africa, but there are opportunities all over the globe for us to curb our consumerism and give joyfully to a cause greater than ourselves.

Maybe your Tuesday without shoes will go something like this:

 

April 5th: Go Barefoot.

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Why?

Because millions in the world go without the basics of life: water, medical access, even shoes. On April 5th join thousands of others who will show their support for those without shoes. (Don’t do it because Demi Moore is doing it, or any of the other ‘celebrities’ highlighted in the video below. We don’t celebrate them; we celebrate the courage of the mom who carries her infant daughter miles and miles daily through the mid-day heat to get quasi-safe drinking water and back the other direction for a ration of food — every step barefoot and with debilitating pain. Go without shoes for one day because there are hundreds of thousands of amazing kids who have no choice today.)

TOMS One Day Without Shoes 2011: April 5th

 

The Bunsen Burner: remember it from chemistry class?

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Yesterday marked Robert Bunsen’s 200th birthday.

The Google Doodle today commemorates the man behind the Bunsen Burner (today for some reason, and not yesterday, his birthday):

Bunsen’s best work came in the 1860s, when he discovered two new elements. Cesium — atomic number 55 — now plays an essential role in atomic clocks. Rubidium — atomic number 35 — is one of the ways to create purple fireworks. Both elements live on the far left side of the periodic table. His team named them after the Latin words caesius (sky blue) and rubidus (dark red). [Source: CSM]

See the animated doodle in action:

Bunsen made becoming a high school chemistry teacher cool. (Mine, Mr. Mohl, would blow stuff up every day, with a continual flow of natural gas running through the burner.)