To tell the truth, I feel inadequate to write anything on the holy week. The amazing love of God shown to us during the events of the holy week leaves me in humble awe and I am questioning whether I can do justice to that. But thankfully this is not about me but about God. So I will share a couple of observations on the awesomeness of God and our deep need of Jesus to choose life over death.

On Palm Sunday people chose a king for themselves but God chose a lamb for the whole world. Like any Pascal lamb Jesus was set apart four days before the event. How amazingly beautiful is that. This leaves me in humble awe of God’s majestic – but detailed – salvation plan to free us from sin and death, free us from our tendency to choose our way over God’s way, free us from choosing death over life.

Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!(Deut. 30:19, NLT)

God creates life but we keep choosing death. The whole Bible tells us so. And we know it from our own lives too. The first page of the Bible tells us how God created life upon life. And the second page of the Bible already tells us that we chose death. This happens over and over and over again. We keep knowingly and unknowingly choosing the bad, the ugly, and pretty much anything that brings death. All this when God offers us life upon life, love upon love, grace upon grace.

God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8, NLT) All we need to do is to say yes to God. Because God sent his only son to die for us on the cross, we can be saved by grace through faith in Jesus. Because Jesus rose on the third day, all who believe in him can receive life everlasting. And that comes with power to choose life over death. Already here on earth.

 

Gracious God,
You are so much better than we can imagine.
You are so much more loving than we deserve.
Lord, forgive us for choosing our way over your way,
choosing death over life.
We don’t want that, we want to be yours.
We want to choose your way over ours, life upon death.
Thank you for sending Jesus to die for us.
Thank you for the whole amazingly beautiful salvation plan.
Pour out grace upon grace, Lord.
Save us with the blood of Christ.
Heal us with the body of Jesus.
In Jesus’ precious name,
Amen

Q4U: It’s holy week. What have you been thinking

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you embrace God’s grace and power to choose life over death!

Image courtesy and design by Mari-Anna Stålnacke. Linking up withUnite the Bloggersphere and#tellhisstory.