#1,932 Requiem For the Living.

I was just nearly moved to tears by our incredible choir’s performance at the Maundy Thursday worship service tonight. What is it about an orchestra that elevates things SO MUCH? I got goosebumps over and over and had to stop myself from clapping at inappropriate moments.

Does your church have a Maundy Thursday service? I had never in my life heard of that until I started dating my Methodist Ben. This is the service when we remember Jesus’s last supper with the disciples before the crucifixion, then we all take communion. After the last supper, he starts falling apart, terrified of what he knows he has to do tomorrow—to suffer through a horrible, humiliating death. He said “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” and he went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray: Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:34 and 36)


Even Jesus felt crippling fear, and He begged his daddy to save him from the agony of it if it was at all possible (shown in the painting I used for the program covers this year). That’s the one scripture that 100% humanizes Jesus for me. It’s easy to think of Him as God, but when you remember how He must have felt—it’s so easy to feel tender toward Him and to love Him, isn’t it?

Tomorrow night is Tenebrae, but Sunday we’ll celebrate. Isn’t Holy Week a magical thing?