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Yearning to Connect

Holy Week has always been a powerful experience for me. Jesus’ exultant return to Jerusalem accompanied by cheering crowds and their expectations of a revolt and an overthrowing of the occupying force’s – a people’s dream of justice and a return to the times experienced during the Kingdom of David was about to become a reality. And then the people’s realization that Jesus rejected violence as a way to peace and subsequently their rejection of Jesus as Messiah, ending in the crucifixion.
Holy Week is a yearly event and yet I experience it in a unique way each and every year. It is also an experience that gained even greater depth for me after Carol and I travelled to Israel and had the opportunity to walk down the Mount of Olives, following the most likely path that Jesus rode on his donkey to the gates of Jerusalem.
The piece of the Easter Story that just seems to resonate with me this year is from Matthew 26:40 when Jesus is in the place called Gethsemane, Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not stay awake with me one hour?’
Jesus was so connected to the Creator, that he often referred to God by the intimate term Abba or Father. From the content of Jesus’ anguished prayer to his father in the garden, we can surmise that Jesus did not feel alone; that he was surrounded by the presence of God. And yet, three times he asked the disciples to stay with him in his moment of need as he prayed. And was disappointed when they could not.
Even Jesus craved human contact in his most vulnerable times. In these times of social distancing it is imperative that even as we practise our spiritual disciplines such as meditation, prayer, walking or music that we reach out to those people in our lives that are important to us. There is no substitution for feeling that we are cared for, not only by Abba, the one that created us, but by at least one other human being.
May you be blessed with a sense of caring and a knowledge that you are cared for, in these difficult times.
Peace be with you.
Wayne