Good morning, and this is Monday of Holy Week. I say that because some mornings I must look at the calendar on my laptop as I look for my emailed morning devotions, just to make sure I know what the day of the week is, much less the date in the month. This morning I knew it was Monday, tomorrow’s another day. I hope you were able to attend Palm Sunday worship yesterday in the safe confines of your home. With almost every church in the country now forced to do on-line worship in some fashion, you had a lot of worship to choose from—and you didn’t even need to shower, get out of your pj’s or burn some currently cheaper gasoline on your drive to morning worship. And isn’t that a hit?–cheap gas and we’re not allowed to go anywhere. Bummer!

Who would have ever thought the Internet could be such an awesome tool of worship? Here’s what I mean. On CBS This Morning a pastor of a mega church—I don’t remember where—said his Sunday morning attendance grew from 11,000 to 45,000 because their worship services were now streamed on-line. Wow! You think maybe this is one good thing from our household quarantine?

Recently a retired pastor friend in a Zoom meeting introduced me to a different Bible translation. One I had never heard of called The Passion Translation. I looked it up and discovered it is one of the translations available on www.biblegateway.com, my “go to” Internet quick source for all-things Bible. Most of us are familiar with, maybe even have memorized Paul’s word in Romans 8:28–here, from the New International Version: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Compare that to this translation from The Passion Translation: So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together to fit into God’s perfect plan of bringing good into our lives, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose. Sure, its what we call a paraphrase, but doesn’t it help us feel more intimately Paul’s passion and meaning as he wrote those words two-thousand years ago?

I repeat again, this is Holy Week. Also often referred to as Passion Week as it is the last week God’s Son, Jesus Christ is incarnate on Earth. He rode into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday to shouts of “Hosanna”, literally “save us” with Palm branches waving everwhere and laid on his path, much like a red carpet. By Friday that self-same crowd shouted “Crucify! Crucify him!”. If you missed it, Pastor Harold Zimmick at Asbury UMC in Madison, WI had a powerful message entitled When the Cheering Stopped. The video is available for you at www.asburymadison.com.

Jerusalem, the Holy City, was swelling with massive crowds of people there to participate in the Jewish Passover. I have a vision of people shoulder-to-shoulder. Today Israel is restricting international travel and requiring those traveling into the country to Home Isolation. Here in America where daily our streets and highways were filled with people there now are very few out and about. Our streets are abandoned.

Sequestered in our homes, we have a wonderful opportunity to find and dust off our Bibles and read the stories from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last week. They begin in Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19:28, and John 12. May God richly bless you in your reading and meditation.

And don’t forget to pray for your church, community, friends and neighbors—and for our leaders as we all look to God for guidance, direction, good health and safety through this pandemic.