Holy Week

We started off by celebrating Palm Sunday in the back yard of Mary Ann's brother, Gordon. Together with many of Mary Ann's friends and family, we gathered to remember her life and celebrate her influence on our lives.

While the children held crosses made from palm leaves, the adults stood up, one at a time and shared their memories of Mary Ann and how she had touched their lives. A circle of red-tailed hawks flew in a thermal over our heads as we lifted up our voices and sang "The Old Rugged Cross" together.

I stood and reminded those who had gathered to remember to honor the living while they are with us, and to practice letting go. Letting go of toys to embrace responsibility. Letting go of fantasy to accept reality. Letting go of anger and hard feelings to embrace forgiveness and receive love. Letting go of life in this world to embrace eternal life in the Kingdom of God.

Last night we gathered again, this time in the home of Betsy Kollberg, to celebrate the Passover Seder. It always amazes me that God instructed the Israelites to observe Passover on a specific date every year, and on that date to blow the shofar at 3pm when the passover lamb was slain, so that roughly 6,000 years later when His Son was hanging on the cross, ON THE SAME EXACT DAY, and they blew the shofar at 3pm, Jesus would say, "It is finished."

On Friday we will celebrate Good Friday together in my home. We will enter quietly and move silently from station to station as families to tear cloth, drive nails, taste vineagar, touch a crown of thorns, tumble dice, and leave our red handprints on the same paper curtain.

Afterwards, we will sit around a low table and light our candles, sing worship songs, share communion, and one by one voice thanksgiving for what Jesus has done for us, blowing out our candles as we go. When the room is dark we will leave as silently as we have come, or perhaps revisit one of the stations to reflect more on the love of Christ for us.

On Sunday morning, we will meet in the morning, on a grassy hill, under a tree and surrounded by passing cars and sunlight we will raise our voices to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, read scriptures of the events and experiences of that first Easter, and share our thoughts and open our hearts to one another on resurrection and what it means for us.

Aftewards, we'll return to our home and help the children create resurrection rolls and continue to share and worship and love one another as Christ loved us.

I love Holy Week.

This Saturday - Motel Ministry

This Saturday (11/22/08) our house church will serve the people living in the California Studio Inn in Santa Ana by passing out free groceries, praying for them as they have need, hosting a bounce house and game time for the children, and spending time listening to them as friends.

My wife and our 2 boys have been serving at this same motel now for over 7 years. It's become a monthly habit for us to go and serve there. We've seen some of the same faces over the years. Some have died. Some have moved to better places. Others have moved to worse situations or simply relocated to other motels.

We've made new friends and we're in the process of learning to love everyone we come into contact with here.

Even though we've been doing this a long time, I pray it will never become a habit for us. I never want to just go through the motions. Instead, I pray that God would always keep this ministry about Jesus and about serving and loving the people who live here.

Our ministry isn't flashy. It's not "big". It's nothing to marvel at. It is simple and humble and very straight-forward. Hopefully the people we serve here know that we love them, and that Jesus loves them, more than anything else.

If nothing else, we have the opportunity to see Jesus in the eyes of these people in real need as we give them something to eat and pray for their families, their relationships, their finances, and their dreams and hopes.

I always feel that we could do more...that it's never enough, really. But our only job is to serve and to be obedient to God as He leads us, and mainly to practice loving others as Christ loved us.

Peace,
Keith