Preparing for Easter
For the majority of people in the UK, preparing for Easter is a matter of making sure the fridge and freezer are well loaded. That Easter Eggs /Easter Bunnies are in place (finding a convincing reason why, is very hard!) and generally preparing for a holiday. There has been over the years some increase in attendance at Easter Services over and above normal Sundays but that is on the decline for all sorts of reasons and this climax of the History of Redemption is increasingly ignored.
I have to admit that I have not checked lately but it was not so long ago when Good Friday was specifically mentioned as a day without collections on Royal Mail post boxes, rather than it simply being included under the Bank Holiday label. So there is still a remnant of the days when Easter was special.
However whatever the world does, Easter is special, very special for God’s people as it is the centre of our lives here and our hope for eternity and so our preparation for this weekend should be very different from that of the world.
I just want to leave you with one suggestion today, the day when the events of this crucial day for us and for all people went into top gear in Jerusalem as Jesus and his disciples gathered for the most significant Passover meal ever.
The suggestion is this.
Take time today to re-read the gospel writers (Matthew, Mark and Luke) accounts of that meal and combine that reading with John chapters 13-17 which gives us a glorious insight into the mind of our Saviour and his love for his disciples as he prepared them for the drama and trauma of what was to happen in the ensuing hours.
They were to go together to Gethsemane where in spite of all their previous protestations the they would let Jesus down as he anguished in prayer to his Father. They were to forsake him and flee as the events of Friday morning unveiled, and were left devasted as it appeared that all hope was gone when Jesus cried ‘It is finished’ and ‘yielded up his spirit’ because even though they had heard his teaching in the Upper Room, they did not yet understand. But Sunday morning was to change all that!
Let us pray that the final words of Jesus recorded for us in the chapters above will thrill us afresh and equip us to stand firm with and for our Saviour in a very challenging world.