This Holy Week I encourage you to look at the big picture. And the big picture is this — Jesus has come and has taken all the sin, all the brokenness, all the tragedies, all the tears, and death upon His shoulders. He died. The terrible things will still be there for a while, but they are no longer absolute or the end of all things. And Jesus rose again from the dead to make it clear that He is indeed victorious over sin and all its horrible damage.
This Holy Week please look at the big picture because there is so much to discourage us as we look at the immediate. Bad and partisan news grab our attention and our time and our emotions. Personally, many of us struggle with Jobian tragedies of loss of income, or loss of loved ones, or loss of health, or all of the above. Life can be very hard. Christians are not Pollyannas pretending things are ok when they are not. God may be good all the time but sometimes that goodness is hidden.
That is why this Holy Week we need to look long and hard at the events of Holy Week, the events commemorated by Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The battle has been won. We are now in a story where the ending is sure and secure. We wait for God’s perfect timing to close the curtain on history and open the curtain to the new heavens and the new earth.
Holy Week also includes Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter when nothing seemed to be happening. Indeed it was a day when the Messiah was defeated and dead. We live in a Holy Saturday world where God is seemingly absent, while evil and death roam unchecked. But we know, or we should know, God’s “picture” has three acts — Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday. Hence we refuse to be shaken and to give up hope.
This Holy Week please look and meditate long and hard on the big picture. We need to be anchored on the truths of Holy Week so that we find the courage and faith to press on when there is so much that discourages. Anchored in the realities of Holy Week, we reach out to rescue those who are drowning in cynicism and despair. But first our anchor must be sure. Let us be anchored in God’s big picture.