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Dear Friends,

This Sunday, with Palm Sunday, we enter into a strange “Shelter in Place” Holy Week. In the Old Testament, God made provision for the Passover, which Good Friday and Easter Sunday fulfilled, to be moved on the calendar if and when God’s people couldn’t gather together to celebrate it properly. I contemplated making a proposal to move our Holy Week celebrations to a time when we could celebrate it properly together – with our Good Friday Dinner and Easter Egg hunts. But I decided against that. Right now, I think we especially need Holy Week. We have lost and missed so much during this time of isolation and quarantine. We need Holy Week, and we need to celebrate the joy of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

This year, I encourage you to enter into lament, especially as we walk through the week together. Enter into the sorrow and take your pain, loss, and struggles to Jesus. Lament the loss of graduations, trips, special events, business, jobs, and community. Lament the loss of lives. Our denomination is joining with others to call for this Good Friday to be a special day of fasting and prayer. You can read more about that here. Good Friday is a day of lament. Also, rather than sending out a whole week of Daily Worship Devotions on Sunday night, I’ll send each day’s out in individual daily emails.

As I approach Palm Sunday, I always return to the words of a poem by Edward Shillito, titled “Jesus of the Scars.”
The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak;
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. Read More

Dear Friends,

Before we delve into this week’s Pastor Weekly, two brief things:

1. I miss you like crazy. It’s hard not being with you, seeing you, hugging you, etc.
2. We hope to launch a new live-streaming service this Sunday directly from our church website (so  we don’t have to email out links every Sunday morning). So pray that it goes smoothly and watch your inbox for further instructions.

This week’s 1 Peter text is about leadership. Our society has a leadership obsession but is crippled by confusion about what leadership is, requires, and involves. When it comes to leadership, we must first consider the end. As one famous songwriter wrote, we have to start with the ending. So, what is the end?

There is a day coming when God’s glory will be revealed. In that day, he promises to restore all things and make everything more beautiful than the perfection that was the Garden of Eden.

• Glory is coming
• Beauty will abound
• Shalom will reign
• You, and all those in Christ, will finally be made right.

Read More

Friends,

What do you cling to or turn to when you suffer? That’s the question God answers in 1 Peter 3:13-22. He gives us important answers to a very relevant question! Now, 1st Peter isn’t written to people who were enduring a pandemic, suffering under social-distancing, and worried about aging parents and the economy. It was written to those who were suffering for following Christ. They were experiencing social isolation, rejection, and financial/business loss. So, we do have some special points of connection here! I am thankful that we are providentially in 1st Peter.

So, where have you been turning this week? What have you been clinging to? If you are like most people, you’ve tuned into a lot of news watching, scanned through a lot of social media, gotten lost in a new novel, binge-watched a fair number of shows, and spent a LOT of time on the internet looking for information, help, distraction, and connection.

As our social-distancing continues, it’s going to get harder. If the novelty hasn’t already worn off, it will soon. So, what are we going to cling to during this time of difficulty and suffering? That’s what we’re going to be looking at this Sunday and next week in our Daily Worship Devotions as we consider 1 Peter 3:13-22.Read More