How fitting in this Holy Week that my Old Testament bible reading has brought me to Lamentations, chapter volumes of sorrowful PROCESSING the suffering reflecting the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, which God prescribed for a certain time of exile.
It’s Holy Week. Jesus 500 plus years later has entered restored Jerusalem. His donkey-ridden entrance fulfilled prophecies with people yelling Hosanna, but they believed in him as an earthly king and they expected an overthrow of this government, which is yet another oppressing foreign rule, harkening back to memories of the Babylonians, but now, an Empire in Rome invading. Now, the Hosannas don’t last and of course, the people by Friday will scorn and mock Jesus, the crowd mob scene already known by Jesus is coming.
I’m starting this book of Lamentations this week by watching ‘The Bible Project’s’ video on YouTube which I highly recommend. It’s just enough of an explanation to get started, telling us that these chapters are poems lamenting the fall of Jerusalem. There are some acrostics too (which seems to be the theme of my month for me and friends who like to make poems starting with first letters). And the bible project video has a fitting image of stones to explain the building of history into history.
It’s at these building stones that I pause and remember the scripture of Jesus walking through the temple, and the apostle’s marveling at the building and Jesus’s marveling that it will all be fallen again, one day as Jerusalem falls again.
Jesus sees the whole of time as well as the intricacies of the moment of the journey. Jesus, fully God, shares in seeing everything from beginning (and before the world) to the New Jerusalem rolling in (book of Revelation to apostle John). Likewise to knowing BIG PICTURE, Jesus God knows us – knowing each hair of our heads as Jesus knows us intimately – and Jesus knows where we fit in time – just like each hair has a root and place. God sees the whole body of Christ even when we see and feel only part.
That’s how Jesus rolls into Holy Week. It’s a completion but it’s a whole new beginning. It’s pain but it’s recovery. It’s walking and then being still. It’s Alpha and Omega showing up to secure the middle.
I will pause here after learning about the beginning of lamentations to process my own. And as a pastor friend mentioned to one of my small groups over the weekend, we hope people don’t skip from Palm Sunday to Easter without processing the middle of the week. Yes. We need to see Jesus as the Alpha and Omega but also see how He is present for every little moment in between. Let us walk with Jesus this week as He walks with us.
Amen
I watched only the first minute so far, for the general gist of lamentations.
A set of scriptures speak to the fall of Jerusalem (thanks Google for the list and Bible Gateway for the text): Matthew 23:37-24:51,Mark 13,Luke 21:5-36
Debbie Upper 