Here we are!

Dear friends,

Here we are! All of our anticipation will soon be met by the proclamation that Jesus Christ is risen. The styles, traditions, and contexts may vary, but on Easter morning, all Christians celebrate this central tenet of our faith. A 2,000-year-old story that never loses its luster, never becomes “old news.” Why? Because Jesus is very much alive, here and now!

And yet, before we celebrate this truth on Easter morning, we walk the way of Holy Week. In it, we are confronted by the complexity of our faith. No other week bears the weight of paradox like this one. A heavenly king on a donkey. A suffering God. Dying to live. Good Friday. An empty tomb. One who has died, alive again!

As Debie Thomas reminds us, “These paradoxes are what give Jesus’ story its shape, weight, and texture, calling us at every moment to hold together truths that seem bizarre, counterintuitive, and irreconcilable.” This is the stuff of a robust faith, one that bears the weight of our lived experiences, of our messy, all too often painful and confusing, world.

Welcome to Holy Week. May we offer our whole selves to the journey, whether we be hopeful or wary, faithful or doubtful, joyful or grief-stricken, or all of the above. Nothing short of the living God awaits us, the one who comes to die so that we might live.

Faithfully,
Crystal+