Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? ~ Half Priced Chocolate

Greetings Dear Reader,

In many parts of the world, today is a holiday as well.  It is Easter Monday.  Over one hundred and twenty countries celebrate today as well as yesterday.  In some, it is even a public holiday.  The intent in the liturgical calendar is to extend the celebration of the Resurrection into an entire week.  Services are supposed to be bright and reflect the joy that is the risen Jesus.

In this country, it is one of the great half-price-chocolate holidays.  The pretty floral bonnets are put away.  The ham is reduced to sandwich meat.  Children will return to school for a restless few weeks before summer break begins.  Forgotten eggs lie in wait around the house and yard to reveal their odious presence as the days warm.  Our hope, however, is in getting bags of our favorite chocolate at half the retail price.

We put the resurrection away much more quickly than we do Christmas.  We congratulate ourselves on having commemorated it.  We do not, I think, get changed enough by it.  I am going to try to put a little laser focus on this closing thought. 

I have been asking about love all year.  It is my foundational theme for my blog this entire year.  We are almost through a third of that year.  In asking where the love is during Holy Week, I am asking that we see that it is all about getting back to a world where love rules and all things are good.  We do not seem to be able to get to the foundational point.  It is this: God loves us.  He wants us to love him and each other.  That reality will make things good again.

We cannot get traction on changing the world for the better until we build this as the foundation.  We are capable of finding many reasons not to act in a loving way but none of them are valid.  If I live every moment seeking to love God and my neighbor, I can truly make a difference.  I can move things closer to good.

Many people will express their love for chocolate today.  If they put that energy into loving each other, the world could change.  We all know in the deepest part of our soul that this is true.  Everything about Jesus’ actions during Holy Week is to ask us to see the Father’s love for us and to love each other.  All of his opposition acted in ways contrary to the idea of love for God and neighbor.

As I turn the corner toward summer, I ponder what warmth I can carry from the resurrection that will warm the souls of those I encounter.  I want to walk with a greater sense of what it means to love others with a true depth of heart and soul.  I yearn for everyone to see that everything Jesus suffered was to show him or her the extent to which he is willing to go to show his love. 

If you have not gotten this yet, I must be expressing myself unclearly Dear Reader.  God loves you.  He loves you right where and when you are.  Your circumstances matter but do not impact the level of the Father’s love for you.  Every good thing in the world is an expression of this.  The entire idea of Passover and the Crucifixion is his paying the ultimate human price to express his divine love for you. 

The Father wants you to seek him in love and in truth.  He is not trying to make you follow a list of rules or diminished who you are.  He wants justice, kindness, goodness, and freedom to fill the universe.  He is nudging us back to a world where everything is good.  We are not there yet, so, he gives is many good things along the way to reveal his love for us.  Oh, and there is still half-price chocolate.    

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? ~ Walking Among the Dead

Greetings Dear Reader,

Please do not think for a moment that I do not rejoice and feel great elation that Christ is risen and that we celebrate it today.  I do.  I am also keenly aware of the way in which our celebration is shrouded in the things of death.  We may have a risen Christ; we still wear the shroud of death.

Looking at the tomb before sunrise we do not see his followers expectantly watching on the third day.  Where are those who were fed, healed, or raised from the dead?  Where are the apostles who spent three years seeing Jesus conquer everything thrown at him?  Why are they still hiding when the GOD-man promised he would rise after his death?  Where is the love for Jesus that was so profoundly professed seven days earlier?

Instead, the living are hiding among the dead.  They hide in upper rooms, borrowed houses, or flee Jerusalem.  Those who have seen the miracles and the exposed power of the Son of God hide in fear because they think him defeated.  The only ones around the tomb are soldiers assigned to be there.  Then, quite suddenly things change.

The angel rolls the stone.  The soldiers faint.  Jesus abandons the shroud of death and walks out of the tomb.  The women who show up to embalm the body wonder who has taken it away.  It takes seeing the risen Jesus for people to regain their faith and following.  Even then, some of them continue to walk among the dead.  They return to a life that no longer fits who they have become.

At this point, I have to face the truth.  I do it too.  I do it all.  There is blood on my hands.  My lips are not clean.  My heart fails.  My faith is weak at times.  I forget to stand in the darkness outside the tomb believing.  It is in each moment that I do these things I forget that the moment is filled with the love of Christ if I will only see it and embrace it. 

For now, I have to walk among the dead, but I carry the secret of life.  I carry the essence of all that is real.  I sometimes act like the dead when I no longer belong.  Everything in this world is condemned and only finds life in Christ.  The only thing I can offer the dead is love because that is what will bring them back to life.

Celebrate Dear Reader.  Wear your pretty floral bonnet.  Open your candy-filled basket.  Hunt your eggs and carve the ham.   Find space, however, to see that today changes everything and we can no longer live unchanged.  The glass has been righted again and time flows through the pinch forever different.  It was running to its fullness.  Now it runs until it is empty.  Things are different forever Dear Reader.  We no longer can pretend we belong here.  We have a journey to complete and the One we follow is walking again.  We had best pick up our crosses and get moving.  Let us see how many we can love enough to convince them to walk with us.

River – Leon Bridges

Been traveling these wide roads for so long
My heart’s been far from you
Ten-thousand miles gone

Oh, I wanna come near and give ya
Every part of me
But there's blood on my hands
And my lips aren’t clean

In my darkness, I remember
Momma’s words reoccur to me
"Surrender to the good Lord
And he’ll wipe your slate clean"

Take me to your river
I wanna go
Oh, go on
Take me to your river
I wanna know

Tip me in your smooth waters
I go in
As a man with many crimes
Come up for air
As my sins flow down the Jordan

Oh, I wanna come near and give ya
Every part of me
But there's blood on my hands
And my lips aren’t clean

Take me to your river
I wanna go
Go on,
Take me to your river
I wanna know

I wanna go, wanna go, wanna go
I wanna know, wanna know, wanna know
Wanna go, wanna go, wanna go
Wanna know, wanna know, wanna know
Wanna go, wanna go, wanna go
Wanna know, wanna know, wanna know

Take me to your river
I wanna go
Lord, please let me know
Take me to your river
I wanna know

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? ~ Black Sabbath

Greetings Dear Reader,

“And a light shined in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.”

In Egypt, on the first Passover, the darkness that descended on the land could be felt.  I cannot fully understand what it would be like to encounter darkness that one can feel.  The fulfillment of Passover carries with it a darkness that we cannot understand.  I sat in the deepest physical darkness today so that I may try to grasp its import.

Our failure to know the history and traditions of the Jews hinders our understanding of the import of Saturday.  To most of us, it is the waiting time between the crucifixion and the resurrection.  It is so much more.  In the world of the first century, it is the Sabbath of Passover week.

Most of Jerusalem goes about celebrating the Sabbath.  Whilst they do, the glass is turning.  It is that time between the sand running out and it is beginning to flow again.  It is when everything hangs in the balance.  Inside and outside of time, the future and eternity hang in the balance.  If Jesus does not rise, then all is lost.

What about today?  Today, we wait in the darkness.  No matter how bright the spring sunrise may be where you are, the darkness that is this Black Sabbath surrounds you.  As Jesus lay in the tomb, people went about their Sabbath day.  They may have discussed that the carpenter had been killed.  Some of his followers mourn as those who have no hope.  All of them hide.

Whilst faithful Jews rest in the customs of the Sabbath, the One whom they obey rests in a borrowed tomb.  The angels keep watch.  So do the Romans.  Some of those Romans have been changed by their encounter with God’s blood.  The day of darkness is a new beginning for them.  

The world waits in darkness unaware of all that is at risk.  The weight of this is lost on us most of the time.  The day will pass for us Dear Reader, but what will we carry from it?  I will ask the Father for nothing today.  He has given enough.   I will still pray.  I will keep watch even though I know the outcome.  I will long for the next celebration of Passover to be with King in New Jerusalem.  I will not forget that today it is dark.  I will remember that like so many things about Jesus, we forget that today is Black Sabbath.  Like the people of his time, many of us go about our business unchanged.  That, Dear Reader, is what must change.

A Little More Like Me – Kenny Rogers

It was an April night and I was right

Been out on the town

The show was at the palace

So we all went on down

We all had a ball as I recall

But now it seems absurd

As the madness raged upon the stage

He didn't say a word

He was a little weird and we all feared

He wasn't one of us

He didn't drink, he didn't smoke

And he didn't even cuss

You'd see him now and then

With a bunch of men hanging around the sea

And I'm sure I would have liked him more

If he were a little more like me

It was a springish each day

The clouds were gray

Looked like it might rain

Thought about the night before

And I was so ashamed

When I heard what they had done to him

A stranger I had known

But as drunk as we all got last night

It's a wonder we got home

He was a little weird and we all feared

He wasn't one of us

He didn't drink, he didn't smoke

And he didn't even cuss

You'd see him now and then

With a bunch of men hanging around the sea

And I'm sure I would have liked him more

If he were a little more like me

And I'm sure I would have liked him more

If he were a little more like me.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? ~ The Darkness Descends

Greetings Dear Reader,

This morning dawned with no dawn for me.  The sky is dark and thunder rolls through the mountains drumming the march of a violent and threatening storm.  The power flickers.  The stream by the house kisses the edge of its banks.  All of this is the start to Good Friday.

All of this is nothing compared to the cost of the day on balance.  God is not dead. He is fully alive, but for a moment, he was.  For a moment it all seemed lost.  For a space, the darkness seemed to have squelched the light forever.  It began today after a mock trial, rejection, betrayal, and beatings.  Mockery is expressed with fists, thorns, and flogging.

The broken man carries the rough-hewn wood.  The crowd cheering of the King has come full circle to line the streets to the Place of the Skull and jeer at the walking dead.  Jesus is among them and they recognize him again.  Instead of spread cloaks and palm branches, they greet their King, for King he still is, with spit and epithets. 

He makes it to the hill.  He is nailed to the tree wearing his crown.  The savage mockery continues.  Angels rage and weep.  More blood feeds the thirsty ground.  The cursed ground that grew the crown drinks in the only thing that can cure it, God’s blood.  Then, the Father turns his face away as the darkness descends.

For a moment, God is dead.  The darkness deepens, the veil rips from top to bottom. and the King who holds the love of us all in his hands is silent as the grave.  For now, Dear Reader, that is where the love of the whole world, the love of God is.  The love is in a borrowed tomb, wrapped in white linen, enshrouded in the full weight of waiting.  For now, that is all we can do is wait; wait and hope.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? ~ Final Feasts

Greetings Dear Reader,

When they gather it is in their minds to celebrate the meal that they have celebrated all their lives.  Since they were children, they have lighted the candles, recited the liturgy, and eaten the meal.  It is the same but it is different.  The one who leads them knows just how different.

The focus of his followers is on anything but the moment.  They are arguing over which of them is superior.  They believe that he has power and can overcome anything.  Their thoughts are on what the victory will look like and the spoils that accompany it.  He has not overcome their hearts and lack of love yet. They are not considering what it will cost to get there.  They do not realize that they will pay for the party with their dearest blood.

How often do we choose to dine on ashes when we have the presence of the Bread of Life?  Why is it when we thirst that we do not seek out the Living Water.  Like the disciples, we pass over the opportunity to host the presence of the Passover Lamb.  Two thousand years of symbolism are lost to them in a pool wine and imagined glory.  We do the same with Easter bonnets and glazed hams. 

Where is the love at this last supper before the night folds its wings and descends?  It is in heart of the GOD-man who will pray for protection for the ones who will feast on his power and then deny him when all seems lost.  It is in the hands of the Carpenter-King who will be a fastened to a chunk of wood that would not exist had he not created it.  It is in the eyes that weep for those who will not see all that is about to unfold. 

From here the love will be carried by the Son of God in a heart that must be broken a few more times before the light returns.  He will die more than once between now and Sunday sunrise.  The Father will remind him in silent shadow that the cup must be emptied to be filled.  In the dark of night, the thirsty ground will taste the first drops of his blood mingled with tears.  In torchlight shadows of the garden, Judas will hand him over.  His friends will run away carrying pieces of his heart with them.  Peter will deny knowing him.  Pilate will wash his hands of the Water of Life.  The palm wavers will raise empty fists shouting to stop the heart of the one they called Blessed. 

What about you and I Dear Reader?  Can we see him for who he is and embrace his way of making things work?  We are asked to follow in love, talk up a cross, and die to all the trappings of this world that distract us from him.  I need to try so that I will be ready for the next final feast.  We can walk in the darkness together if you wish until morning comes to stay.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Second Thoughts ~ Holy Week 2019 ~ Tenebrae

Greetings Dear Reader,

Around the world tonight, as the darkness gathers, there are many people celebrating Tenebrae.  The word, from Latin, literally means “darkness”.  The service is one where “In the Roman Catholic Church, matins and lauds for the last three days of Holy Week, at which candles are successively extinguished.”

Churches use no artificial lights but candles and they are slowly snuffed out until all is dark.  It is to commemorate the darkness that is about to come, that gathers in Jerusalem as time rushes through the pinch to fullness.  The upper bulb is about to empty and become barren of time.  The lower bulb will be full. 

For today we sit at dinner, most of us oblivious to what is about to occur.  Judas knows because he has been to the Pharisees and carries with him the darkness of pushing Jesus toward destiny.  The Pharisees know and carry the malevolent darkness of hatred turned toward the God the vowed to defend. 

You see, Judas sought for the Messiah and found him.  He saw the miracles, the healing, the dead raised to life.  His darkness is the desire for God to conform to Judas’ image of him.  He cannot see that pushing God to act in that image is idolatry.  He cannot see that his walking in the shadows has helped him become accustomed to the song of darkness.

The Pharisees are willing to use God’s money to kill Jesus.  They pay Judas out of the treasury.  They claim to serve the God of Abraham, Moses, and David.  They fail to see that the carpenter they hate is the GOD-man they seek.  The question his authority, his motive, and his love.  Like the Pharisees, we all want proof of God’s being with us, Immanuel, until he stands in front of us.  Then we do not want his light to shine on our shadowy dark following.

Someone else sees the gathering darkness Dear Reader.  Jesus sees it.  The weight has already begun to gather on him like a cloak of death.  The darkness in the men he loves, his disciples dims the world in which he walks.  He recalls the shadows of the past.  The shadowy stable where he cried his way into the world seems far away in human time.  The shadow of Death that took his foster father stretches back toward him.  The shadow on Judas’ face where the man will no longer look him in the eye brings a tear to it.

It is only Wednesday.  The shadow of the cross is two days away.  Tonight, we must remember the darkness Dear Reader.  We must embrace the Light that is in the darkness and who is our only way out of it.  We are only part way there but the shadows are growing long, the sun is getting low, and the darkness encroaches on our celebration.  I challenge you to sit in the darkness in silence for a space tonight.  Ponder what it costs for the light to be gone, even for a brief time.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? ~ Do You Love Him?

Greetings Dear Reader,

In some Holy Week traditions, this day is called Spy Wednesday.   It is the day in which Judas is thought to have arranged to hand Jesus over to the priests.  I wish to acknowledge a couple of things that I often get asked on this topic.  They are valid questions with salient answers.

The first is that, yes, Judas did hand Jesus over to the priests and was paid for it.  When used in reference to Judas, the Greek word, “paradidomi” is translated “betrayed.”  When used in other discussions about the disciples the word is translated “handed over.”  The translation is used to set Judas apart as somehow worse and greedier than the other apostles.

Let us consider that for a moment.  It was not just Judas who worried about the cost of the perfume used to anoint Jesus.  They all judged the woman and grumbled about the money.  They all argued about which of them would be the most important in the Kingdom.  They all ran at some point.

We also need to remember that Jesus knew everything that Judas would do as events unfolded.  He was neither surprised nor unloving about it.  He counseled Judas to do quickly what he was going to do.  Jesus wants things to unfold differently but knows that they will not.

We need a scapegoat.  We want someone to blame for the death of Jesus and the horrible treatment that preceded it.  Judas is villainized because he did openly what we do all the time.  We deny and betray the Son of God daily.  We know to do right and do not do it.  We focus on the things that do not matter instead of pursuing Christ in raw devoted love.

Where is the love on this day?  Do you love Judas?  You see, you cannot claim to love Jesus without loving Judas, Dear Reader.  I have heard a story that I cannot verify and Snopes says it is false.   The glurge of it is still a good one.  It is reported by some that when Davinci was painting The Last Supper that the same man who posed for Jesus posed for Judas many years later. He was not recognized by Davinci because of years living in degradation. 

We cannot prove or disprove the tale.  What I can say is this, if we fail to see that every human is the image of God, we fail to honestly see Jesus.  We must love everyone.  We must not believe for a moment that we are better than Judas, or Pilate, or Herod.  We must see that man who was in very nature God saw in us someone to love and allowed his friend to move forward the plan to redeem us. 

In the middle of Holy Week, we have already gone from welcoming Jesus as Messiah and King to selling him for silver.  We are already stepping into the shadows to avoid being seen with the Light of the World.  There is a darkness coming that we cannot avoid.  Love is the only thing that will see us through it.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? Oil and Tears

Greetings Dear Reader,

On the first warm day of Spring this year, I went on a long walk on a dusty trail.  I wore my very sturdy and protective Kean sandals.  They have good traction on most surfaces, are comfortable, and breathe.  It is also important to note that they are sandals. 

Upon arriving back at my place, I slipped off the sandals intending to put on my house shoes.  I noticed how dirty my feet were.  The dust of the path and sweat on my feet had joined to form a rather stubborn crusty dirt where the spaces were between the sandal straps.  It took some real washing to get off the dried dirt.  It made what follows so clear to me.

It is not clear if it was Monday or Tuesday of Holy Week, but it is still vital to our observance.  A woman who fully embraces what Jesus represents comes to the dinner at the house of Simon, a nobleman.  She uses her tears of joy and sorrow to wet Jesus’ feet.  Then tries his feet with her own hair.  She uses expensive perfume to anoint his cleansed feet.

The nobleman who was honor-bound to have the feet of his guests washed allows there to be criticism.  The holy men rebuke the GOD-man for allowing a sinner to touch him.  The disciples and not just Judas worry about the cost of the nard.  It seems that no one in the room but the woman gets what is going on in Jerusalem this week.

Where is the love?  It is in the woman who may or may not be Mary Magdalene, so overcome by grief and joy that she acts as the lowest servant to prepare her Master for burial.  She cleans the feet that will walk to Golgotha in a few days.  She weeps tears on the place where the long iron spike will fasten him to the rough wood. 

The love she shows is vast and beautiful.  The judgment poured on her as she pours the oil is so far from love.  The other men see only the woman’s sinful past.  They see something they view as too intimate.  They hold out judgment over love and honest understanding.  So do we Dear Reader.

If we saw this, we would know to accept it because we know the story.  How often, however, do we judge others who do not know the social customs of a situation.  We will judge those who come to church but do not dress the way we think people should dress for church.  We look down on those who only come on Resurrection Sunday.  Ironically, we also look down on those who usually come on every week, but do not show up for Resurrection Sunday.

Judging the sin of others is not an act of love.  It is the opposite of it.  If someone has the courage to seek Jesus at any level, we must accept them as they come.  The only way we find Jesus is to seek him.  We must set aside our social mores and customs to see that we show the love of Christ as the foundation of welcoming those who need him.  It may mean you have to hug a sinner or two Dear Reader.  Jesus is about to open his arms to embrace the whole world.  We dare not reject anyone he loves.  In case it is not clear, Jesus loves everyone, every human ever.

Father – Terry Talbot

The alabaster case of oil is open

And washing the feet of Jesus

The sweet perfume is poured

I am like the cask I must be broken

So from my heart will flow

A life unto my Lord

Father break me

Take me through the fire

Father hold me, mold me

Just as you desire

I am just a cup to overflow your will

But first I must be empty to be filled

I saw myself as only drifting

Lost upon the waters

Sinking like a stone

Then your tide washed around me

I was lifted

If I follow the morning star

I’ll be sailing home

Father break me

Take me through the fire

Father hold me, mold me

Just as you desire

I am just a cup to overflow your will

But first I must be empty to be filled

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? – Preparing the Temple

Greetings Dear Reader,

After entering Jerusalem to the praise of the masses, Jesus had gone to the Temple the previous day.  He had left because it was late in the day.  He returns after spending the night in Bethany.  He goes to the Temple again and finds his Father’s house filled with merchants and thieves.  He encounters those who change common money to “holy money” at a greedy and onerous exchange rate.

The entire scene is one where people are celebrating their redemption by commerce and avarice.  He knows he is there to die.  He is aware of what the Father is planning and sees the way the people for whom he is about to die treat the celebration of deliverance.  The Passover Lamb is fully aware of how those for whom he will die are treating his Father’s house.

I cannot begin to understand how he felt in that moment.   The entire idea of this annual celebration is to commemorate how the Father delivered his people from bondage in Egypt.  It is to recall the promise that One is coming to deliver them from eternal bondage to sin.  Instead, the leadership cheats and robs their own people.  They grow rich off of the faith of common people who have traveled far to obey the Father.

When we make ministry of any kind about money, we are guilty of the same thing.  Jesus promises that the Father will supply all of our needs but we still think we have to take up an offering.  We use guilt and manipulation to coerce money from the faithful.  We evidence that we love money more in our embrace of it over faith. 

I have attended a couple of churches that do not take up an offering and rarely talk about money.  They have boxes in discrete locations for those who wish to donate to the ministry.  They both have enough for their programs and are able to be generous to others in need.  Unfortunately, I have also been in churches where the offering was the pinnacle of the service.  The contrast is stark and obvious.

I find that I am wondering where the love is.  I am not only pondering where it can be found but where it is directed.  When Jesus cleanses the Temple, he is loving his Father and the purpose of the Temple.  He is loving the common Jew who is being robbed by the priests and vendors. 

The temple leadership is loving money, which Jesus has already proclaimed to be the root of all evil.  The love of money feeds evil.  The love of God motivates one to be generous.  The GOD-man cleansing the Temple is doing so to prepare it for the ultimate sacrifice that is about to occur. 

Where is the love?  It is in the heart of the Son of God putting the place of sacrifice above the greed of those entrusted with caring for it.  It is in the heart that sees that the Father provides a sacrifice for himself and does not need to rob us to sustain it.  I think we must agree, Dear Reader, that in almost every place the church needs to improve its approach to money and love.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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Holy Week 2019 ~ Where is the Love? – Palm Sunday

Greetings Dear Reader,

Holy Week begins with the commemoration of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Jesus arrives to the celebratory welcome of thousands.   What we do not discuss is the why of it.   We do not see that it is not simply those who know of Jesus welcoming him into Jerusalem.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem, he is making a very clear statement.  He allows the people to welcome him as, “The King who comes in the name of the LORD.”   He verifies their thoughts that he is the promised Messiah.  He rides on to the temple to verify his claim.  He teaches from the Torah and heals people.

Here is the problem.  The people are welcoming him not as the Messiah who is there to redeem them.  They want him to use the power they have seen in him for three years to overthrow their oppressors, the Romans.  They do not love Jesus.  They love the idea of a man of power overthrowing their enemies with that power. 

The people cheer and cry “Hosanna in the highest.”  They welcome him as a conquering king but he arrives as a humble King.  His silence is only broken when those who are supposed to understand and protect the Law and the Prophets challenge him for accepting the praise.  They demand that he silence the crowd.  He reminds them that if he did, the very rocks would cry out worship to him. 

There is no love from the keepers of the Law, yet that very Law demands that they love him.  That Law insists, and Jesus verified that it is built on the idea of vertical love of the Father and horizontal love of humans, both neighbors, and enemies.  Most of these people do not cry out praise out of love.  They act out of their own interests.    

The people are asking him to conquer their enemies and they will make him king of the nation.  He has been telling them that if they make him King of their Souls, he will conquer the world for them through love.  Which do you think is the greater Dear Reader?

I must be sure that my following of Christ is for his purposes and not my own.  I must welcome him by loving the Father and every human as the prime mover in all that I attempt.  I must constantly ask where the love is in his interactions with the world then and now.  I must seek it, emulate it, and follow it wherever it leads.  I must never forget that the cheers of the crowd will turn in jeers that mock him before the week is out.  Praise offered without love turn to cries for his death filled with the hatred that really fueled that praise.

The love is not found in the praises offered for a wrong purpose.  It is found in the Son of God as he rides toward his death out of love for every human that has or will ever live.  That is the love we will look for throughout this Holy Week.  Please, share with me your thoughts Dear Reader.

Ride on to Tide – Michael Card

Sense the sorrow untold, as you look down the road
At the clamoring crowd drawing near
Feel the heat of the day, as you look down the way
Hear the shouts of Hosanna the King

Oh, daughter of Zion your time's drawing near
Don't forsake Him, oh don't pass it by
On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said
Passing by you, He rides on to die

Come now little foal, though you’re not very old
Come and bear your first burden bravely
Walk so softly upon all the coats and the palms
Bare the One on your back oh so gently

Midst the shouting so loud and the joy of the crowd
There is One who is riding in silence
For He knows the ones here will be fleeing in fear
When their shepherd is taken away

Oh, daughter of Zion your time's drawing near
Don't forsake Him, oh don't pass it by
On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said
Passing by you, He rides on to die

Soon the thorn cursed ground will bring forth a crown
And this Jesus will seem to be beaten
But He'll conquer alone both the shroud and the stone
And the prophecies will be completed

Oh, daughter of Zion your time's drawing near
Don't forsake Him, oh don't pass it by
On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said
Passing by you, He rides on to die

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Contacts for Aramis Thorn:

Support Page on Patreon: www.patreon.com/aramisthorn

Novels on Amazon             

Web Page:  www.aramisthorn.com

Bookings: aramisthorn@aramisthorn.com

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This BLOG:  http://aramisthorn.blogspot.com/