As I write, Easter is one week away – five Days by the time you read this. Five days in which we will hear Jesus’ last words to his friends, witness Mary’s poignant movement toward his suffering, and walk with him to Jerusalem for a Passover the likes of which no one had seen before.

We’ll see Judas leave the last supper and wonder why no one else caught that he was the betrayer. We’ll enter Gethsemane and feel the reality that we probably would have slept too. Emotions of fear, chaos and justice stir as soldiers take him first to Herod, then Pontius Pilate, before leading him to the whipping court and the horrible walk to Golgotha.

In five days’ time, Jesus will have traversed betrayal, excruciating pain, heart-wrenching, gut-clenching, turn-the-word-upside, seemingly-unending moments. And he will have stomped on the head of death and won the new way of the Spirit for us.

All that in the next five days.

I wonder what it was like for Jesus to walk forward into all that? What it was like for the Father to watch his son move into this most costly part of their redemption plan? What the Spirit’s mood and action to surround and attend Jesus on the way to Calvary? How much did Jesus know? 

In wondering what Jesus felt about all that, I wonder what we feel about it?

Perhaps you have been in this position, knowing something was coming, unable to halt or slow it, but knowing that you will have to walk it, endure it, feel it…and you know it will not be pleasant.

What is it like for you to wait for it to come? What emotions roll around inside of you? Perhaps like Jesus, you experience agony and dread while wrestling in your own Gethsemane. This letting go of our will, our agenda, our way of thinking, our way of responding…it does not surrender easily. Sometimes we wish time could slow so we wouldn’t have to accept what we did not choose. And yet, by the very fact we wrestle and continue forward, we in Jesus do choose the cross.

How are you in the waiting? With what do you wrestle?

What do you want to say to Jesus at this point?

As you begin this holy week journey I wonder if you might take some time to become aware of being with Jesus as he walks into this week. How is it to be with him? What is it like that he is also with you?

As you step forward together, how would you like to mark this week of prayer?