The Hardest Part. . . .

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; 

   he rises to show you compassion. 

For the LORD is a God of justice. 

   Blessed are all who wait for him!

--Isaiah 30:18

(Sunday marks the beginning of the Christian Holy Week. We begin in joyous celebration on Palm Sunday, remembering Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem; Maundy Thursday reflects on Jesus' last supper with his disciples; Good Friday, the day the Lord was crucified; Holy Saturday, the day Jesus lay lifeless in the tomb; and finally, Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. The day Mary Magdalene discovered the rock had been rolled away and the tomb was empty-- and death itself had been defeated.)

We spend an awful lot of our life waiting, don't we? We wait in line, we wait for the mail carrier to bring us a letter from home. We wait for our spouses to get home from work; we wait, endlessly, it seems, for a live human voice on the other end of the phone line. We wait for test results; we wait for news about a loved one, or a job promotion. (Sometimes we wait for a busy blogger to get around to her daily Lenten promise.)

Mary waited, nine long months after the angel Gabriel paid his visit, for this newborn baby to be delivered into her loving arms.

The disciples waited in the Upper Room, because Jesus told them to wait until the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:4). (I think that wait must have been extremely difficult for Peter. Peter liked to do. Now. All of it. Five minutes ago. But it also must have been hard because the disciples were now frightened, without the one they had loved and followed.)

This week, we wait, as well.

Even as we know the end of the story, and it is a very good ending, we are called to walk slowly and wait. 

The victory celebration must not be hurried. 

We cannot simply skip over the pain-filled parts because we don't like reading about the way we treated the Savior, how we beat him and scourged him with cords and whips until he bled, or how we argued over his possessions, meager though they were, and then nailed him to a tree to die in the hot sun of the middle of the day. 

We'd like to. But we cannot. We just cannot.

As we eavesdrop on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, we cannot help but wonder if he, too, would have just as soon skipped over those icky parts.

Imagine knowing how you were going to die, knowing the horrible, humiliating path that lay before you, and choosing to follow it anyway, trusting in the will of the One who would walk the path with you.

Kind of makes all our waiting seem less-- important.

What will you do while you wait this week? 

Will you pray? Fast? Meditate on the Passion narratives in Scripture? 

Will you partake of Holy Communion-- and will you first examine your soul? 

Will you seek to offer forgiveness-- and receive the same?

Whatever you choose, slow down. Even when it hurts a bit (or hurts a lot), don't be in a hurry to finish the hurting.

Pain, suffering, growth. All these go hand-in-hand.

Lord Jesus, as I walk this week again, help me to keep the focus on you. May my perspective be as you would have it be. And may I be in no hurry to just "get through it" and race to the empty tomb. Amen.