March 21

An excerpt from Let's Grow into Lent

Growing in the Light

Saturday • Colossians 1:3-14

Paul wrote to the Colossians to encourage them. He wanted them to remember the Truth of God’s Word as they had first learned it. He also reminded them that they were bearing fruit and growing in the light of the Son, Jesus Christ.

We know that plants need sun to bear fruit. Sometimes potted plants get too much shade and start to get weak. A gardener can move the plants into the sun to help them get strong again.

We know that faithful Christians also need the Son in order to grow and bear fruit. We can be like Paul and remind them. We can encourage others around us to read God’s Word and pray with us. Think about how you can do that today. Will you write a note? call someone? Maybe you can offer to pray with your mom and dad tonight.

God, help me to stay in the Son, to see the light of the truth of your Holy Word.

March 22

An excerpt from Faithful Facts for Lent

Mary of Bethany

Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with its fragrance. John 12:3

Mary, more spiritually attuned than her practical sister Martha, performed an act of worship and humility. Nard was prepared from the roots and stems of an herb from India, and thus very costly. This time her action drew complaints, not from Martha, but from Judas Iscariot, who grumbled that the nard could have been sold for 300 denarii and the proceeds given to the poor. (Since one denarius was a laborer’s wage for one day’s work, this was a princely sum.) Jesus answered for Mary. “Let her alone,” he told Judas, adding that her actions pictured beforehand his own burial spices. We can only guess how many of the 300 denarii Judas would have reserved for himself, rather than the poor.

Jesus had told the Twelve about his forthcoming Passion, so doubtless Mary, Martha and Lazarus were aware of that as well. With love for her Savior, and grieving over what lay ahead, Mary, in her anointing of Jesus, provided profound meaning for the unsettling circumstances to come.

Just as Mary of Bethany was filled with loving awe at what was soon to take place in your earthly life, O Suffering Servant of God, kindle in us parallel feelings of wonderment as we approach Holy Week. Amen.

March 23

An excerpt from A Place for Prayer

He fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Matthew 26:39

In anguish in Gethsemane, Lord, you pleaded with your Father that you would not have to drink the terrible cup of pain and suffering that awaited you. Yet you prayed that your Father’s will, not yours, would be done. You were betrayed into the hands of your enemies, put on trial, condemned and nailed to the cross. There you accomplished your Father’s will and drained the cup of suffering to the end—for me, for us all. Crucified and risen Lord, accept my thanks and praise. Amen.

Maundy Thursday • March 24

An excerpt from Living Lent as People of the Resurrection

Live Love

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:12-13

I am an avid coffee drinker, so my daughter gave me a T-shirt poking fun at my love for coffee. Now that may not exactly qualify as foot-washing servanthood, but it was a genuine mark of her love for me. Love is the way to live Lent as people of the resurrection. Living love means: don’t judge—empathize; don’t convict—convince; don’t tell—show; don’t condemn—forgive. And through it all, even when we continue to judge and convict and condemn, God pours his love from the cross on us and woos us back again to him.

Lord and Author of love, thanks for loving us, even when we are so unlovable. Help us love our friends as you love us. Amen.

Living Lent Today: Share with others this verse by John Fischer: “Love him in the morning when you see the sun arising; love him in the evening ’cause he took you through the day; and in the in-between time when you feel the pressure coming, remember that he loves you and he promises to stay.”

Good Friday • March 25

An excerpt from Home, Heart, Spirit

Real Death

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:28-30

When Jesus died on the cross, it was a real death. Although he was the Son of God, Jesus’ heart stopped beating and his brain no longer functioned when he died on Good Friday. As hard as it is to think about Jesus’ death, we need to think about it for at least two reasons. First, the death of Jesus had to come before he could rise from the dead. We believe in his resurrection from the dead, and nothing less than that. Second, someday each one of us will die, too, and the hope we have as Christians is a hope in the face of our own death, because Jesus himself died first. It is sad to realize that Jesus died for us, but he did it to give us a joyful hope in his resurrection.

Lord Jesus, thank you for the gift of your sacrifice for us.

March 26

An excerpt from Faithful Facts for Lent

The Dead Jesus

Joseph [of Arimathea] bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock. And he rolled a stone in front of the doorway of the tomb. Mark 15:46

Today is Holy Saturday, named to honor the death and burial of Jesus of Nazareth, whose lifeless body was interred in Joseph of Arimathea’s new tomb, sometime between 3 P.M. and sunset on Friday. April 3, A.D. 33. Many of his sorrowing followers thought that this was the tragic end of an innocent prophet who did so much good for people in his three and a half years of ministry.

Saturday was also the most extraordinary day in cosmic history, provoking theological debates and even heresies to the present day. The hymn “O Sorrow Dread, Our God Is Dead” expresses the problem. Was God really dead? The Patripassian (the Father suffered) heretics thought so, but God cannot die. If He did, the universe would collapse. That hymn, therefore, is misleading. It was the human nature of Christ, his genuine humanity, that lay in Joseph’s tomb.

What happened early Sunday morning, however, when Jesus’ divine and human natures were reunited, forever ended such speculation. It would be the happiest shock ever experienced by anyone, anywhere.

You had already demonstrated your ability to raise the dead, O Victor over Death, so why did your own disciples not look forward to your resurrection? They probably did not think you could raise yourself, yet as God you could. Blessings, honor and praise to you for defeating death—for us all! Amen.

Easter Sunday • March 27

An excerpt from Mercy Passion and Joy

Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” John 20:28-29

Either this man was, and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. (Mere Christianity, 56)

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis entitled what became his most famous chapter in that book “The Shocking Alternative.” The shock Lewis mentions in this chapter is not that Jesus rose from the dead, even though he did. The shock is in considering the alternative options if the resurrection is denied. For Lewis, the shock is especially in the realization that this Jesus claimed to have the authority to forgive sins, and to forgive sins as though he were the one chiefly offended in all sins. That ability to forgive sins is what leads Lewis to offer three alternatives: Son of God, madman or worse. Lord, liar or lunatic.

Thomas got it right: “My Lord and my God.” He never considered “liar” or “lunatic” as options because he knew Jesus too well to give those options any credence. We get it right when we join Thomas in worshiping the risen Lord Jesus and saying, whether in our hearts or with our lips, “My Lord and my God.”

Crucified, risen and reigning Lord, as Thomas once confessed, I, too, confess you as my Lord and my God. Amen.