Dear Redeemer Family,
Yesterday, when Virginia Governor Ralph Northam issued the Stay-At-Home order - (which will remain until at least June 10) our need for a prescribed sense of order and routine went from a felt-need to an absolute-essential. Whether we’re trapped in an apartment by ourselves, or marooned in a retirement community house, or sequestered in a brick rancher with toddlers - we are all experiencing the tendency for the hours and days to stretch on and on endlessly. Someone sent me a meme the other day with this phrase, “In case you forgot the date, today is March 97th.” Amen. Me too. Here here.
As I call, text, email, zoom with many of you - I keep hearing stories about some of you finding yourself still in pajamas at 2pm, eating 7 meals a day out of boredom, and giving in to the temptation to watch Netflix past midnight. I’m also hearing lots of stories from parents of young children who are going stir crazy and have already exhausted every activity, craft, lesson, story, game idea they have!
Yall, this is hard, and the bad news is, it’s about to get much more difficult. All of us will either descend into a kind of depressed, anxious, boredom; or we will exercise and develop the kind of inner and outer disciplines that are necessary to give structure and order to an otherwise flattened season of life.
*Aside: For the handful of us that think we are the exception to the rule - that we can skate by without sliding into lethargy or strengthening into discipline - let’s not fool ourselves. We are all on a trajectory here: are we growing and taking steps forward in faith or are we backsliding? It is always one or the other. There is no neutral ground. Ever.
And to give us the kickstart we need to begin ordering our days with great intentionality, we have the most important week of the year - HOLY WEEK.
The gift of Holy Week for us, in the time of quarantine and coronavirus, is not only it’s content (the passion of Jesus), but also its contours (the lowest of lows and highest of highs).
We need the content of Holy Week - more than ever before.
We need to reenact the triumphal entry, the footwashing, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. We need to be reminded that Jesus comes to be our King, to serve us, to give Himself as a ransom for us, and to secure our eternal future.
But we also need the contours - we need days that are different from one another.
Days that are set apart, special, holy.
This is the gift of going through Holy Week in the time of coronavirus.
Yes, we are lamenting being separated from one another and bemoaning the total lameness of doing Holy Week services online. I feel it too. Trust me.
However, there is a hidden gift for us here. More than ever we are in need of structure - an order that is imposed upon us, from the outside. So many of us are not all that good at running our own schedules! We are not good masters, not even to ourselves!
We need to be told what to do and how to do it. Holy Week gives us the order and structure that we need.
So dear friends, next week, I invite you to give yourself to fully participating in Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Throw yourself headlong into these times of worship, prayer, service, fasting, and celebration. Allow Holy Week to be something of a bootcamp, a pre-season training of sorts, to whip us all into spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical shape for the challenging season that lies ahead of us.
Who knows what the next few months will be like? No matter what comes our way, we will be prepared if we have allowed the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus to shape our hearts, minds, bodies, and even our schedules.
In the Father’s love,
Dan
