It’s nearly the end of the month of March, and in the middle of the holiest week in the Christian calendar: every day of Holy Week invites us to breathe, pray and notice differently. It is truly a pregnant week, filled to the brim with longing, witness, waiting, suffering, and measured hope. It has only been one week since the vernal equinox and one night away from the full moon that determines when Easter shall be. RHYTHM looms large in this Holy, first week of Spring. If we pay attention, there is movement and a vibrancy everywhere we look. The Scriptures for this week turn us from Palm Sunday triumph that is fraught with betrayal and the very real sense that Jesus’ fate is sealed. We move from cheering and the waving of palms to greet Jesus, to the urgent need to prepare for a Passover meal with His friends…his last meal with them. All our senses are awakened as we follow the events that led to this supper, the hasty, unjust trial, the torture, the death, the burial. We sense the tension, we feel the water on the disciples’ feet, we smell the lamb and spices of the Jewish meal, we taste the bread, we hear legacy words: “whenever you eat, you will remember me…” we see fear in many eyes, and soon there will be bloodshed, and tears, and cries of anguish. As we re-live the events we are carried along by the rhythm of it all. The rhythm that governs all our lives, you and me: it is the way of things, the way life goes, as they say.

God’s Word tells it clearly enough; there is a time for everything…no thing stands still…we experience in our lifetime inevitable change, and our happiness depends on moving with that flow. There is joy, and there is sorrow…there is ministry followed by a sabbatical; a life of work followed by retirement…a 5-day week and then a weekend…a time to gather, and a time for solitude…silence that comes after much noise…the dormancy of Winter replaced by the bursting forth of Spring. This is the rhythm of creation: ebb and tide…a tree giving sap and then the tree withholding it for its own needs.

Celtic wisdom tells us there is an ebb to every tide except the tide of God’s grace. Droughts do not last forever…death gradually brings forth new life…Good Friday gives way to Easter Sunday! And the agonizing wait of Holy Saturday is always rewarded. It is up to us, you and me, to let ourselves be carried by this rhythm, set to motion by our wise Creator. Faithfulness is possible only by those who choose to believe that each new dawn holds the promise of God’s tender mercy toward us. Knowing this should be enough to keep us going! Happy Spring! Blessed Easter!