Approaching Easter

As I enter this time of prayer, I repeat the words of Psalm 88:1–3, slowly, several times, making them my prayer to God:

‘LORD, you are the God who saves me;

day and night I cry out to you.

May my prayer come before you;

turn your ear to my cry.

I am overwhelmed with troubles.’

Pause and repeat

In the final days before His death, Jesus speaks again and again about eternal life. Over the next three days, we are going to do the same, starting with a reading from John 12:23–25:

Pause to read the passage

Pete writes, ‘When Sammy and I were facing the stark possibility that she would die at the age of thirty, I was dismayed to discover that … my imagination was bereft of any imagery or vocabulary that could grant genuine comfort and joy at the prospect of resurrection from the grave … The contemporary Western church at large seems to me to have little belief in the afterlife. We are so temporal and comfortable. We can perpetuate the delusions of our own immortality for longer than any previous generation, but ultimately, unless our death comes instantaneously in early life, we must think about such things. We will be the poorer if we do not. And so I have begun a solemn pilgrimage that some might deem a little morose. My aim? To get excited about spending eternity with Jesus’*

Take a little time now to let your imagination run wild, visualising the new earth in which ‘there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Rev. 21:4).

Pause and reflect

You alone, Lord, know the number of my days. May my life and even my death bring glory to You, both now in this world and also in the life to come.

Pause and pray

As I bring this time with God to a close, I pray the words of the hymn ‘It Is Well with My Soul’ by Horatio Spafford:

And Lord haste the day, when the faith shall be sight,

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,

Even so, it is well with my soul.

Amen.

*Pete Greig, God on Mute, David C Cook, (Colorado Springs, 2020), p263-64