Passion Week: Silent Wednesday

Activity: With your parent's permission, gather the ingredients, measuring spoons, and a Ziploc bag and follow the recipe for Fall Spice Blend. 

Place the ingredients in the bag, close it, and gently shake it to mix---and you will have a yummy blend of spices that is good for any time of year, not just fall. Mix a tablespoon with a cup of sugar in a separate container and you will have a delicious topping for toast or oatmeal or anything else that sounds good.

Recipes are like a puzzle. Sometimes you don't know what its going to look like until its all done. Runny cake batter doesn't look very tasty, but warm yummy cupcakes fresh out of the oven when they are done are! Sometimes the Bible has “puzzle pieces” too that are hard to figure out until the last piece is in place. Often today is referred to as “Silent Wednesday” as the Bible does not say much about what Jesus did on this day. But Silent does not mean God was not at work. Let's put together the puzzle pieces and follow the scent...

The first piece most of us know is when the Wisemen or Magi visited Jesus as an infant. They brought him gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. The Bible tells us that the Wisemen “bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”(Matt 2:11) They worshiped Him. This wasn't just a baby shower. These gifts helped Mary and Joseph start a new life in Egypt. But these gifts were also part of a greater puzzle God had planned.

In the Tabernacle and later the Temple there was the Alter of Incense. It was made from wood, overlaid with gold. And on it burned a mixture of incense continually which filled the room. 

It reminded the people of that our prayers rise to a Listening God. You could tell if the priest had been in the presence of God: You could smell it on him! The scent of the incense permeated everything.

You couldn't fake being in God's presence. Everyone would know. That incense had a special blend...frankincense, myrrh and one other ingredient...can you guess what that oil was?

 Nard!

So when Mary anointed and worshiped Jesus she completed the scents of the altar of Incense: the missing puzzle piece just before his death. Jesus was fully human (think of the wood), but fully God (think of the gold) and His death provided a connection to God (just like smoke rising from the Altar of Incense). 

So when Mary completed the last “puzzle piece” Jesus reminded his disciples she was preparing Him for His death. God had it all planned from birth to death! And once again, just like then, people can tell if You've been in God's presence...His “scent” stays with you...even in the silent times.

Passion Week: Holy Tuesday

Activity: Get an apple. 

With your parent's permission, eat it all the way to the core to get to the seeds. If your parent wants to help you, they can cut an apple in half and help you get the seeds out. How many did you find? In every apple there are up to 5 seeds. Plant one and you get a...drum roll, please...an apple tree! An apple tree grows apples that produces fruit, that produces seeds, that grows into plants that make more apples...the cycle continues. 

Now on Monday,

 before Jesus went to clean house, He saw a fig tree in the distance, now watch...

The tree looked good from a distance but it didn't produce fruit. 

So as a lesson to His disciples, He curse it and when they came back by on Tuesday, on His way to go teach in the Temple, they passed the fig tree and it had died in one days time! This was a lesson to the disciples that looking good wasn't good enough. He wanted His disciples to bear fruit, no matter how small.

So Jesus wants his disciples to produce fruit for Him. He doesn't want us to just look good, He wants us fill us with His Spirit so people will see Jesus in us. He wants us to start with the basics: Love, for "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35...and the rest of the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) will follow drawing others to Him though our lives.

So as Jesus stood in the Temple teaching throughout that Tuesday, once again the scent of the nard filled the space around Him. You couldn't help but know you were in Jesus' presence. And if you live out His love, people will know YOU are still in His presence today 😊

Passion Week: Holy Monday

Activity: With your parent's permission, find a cupboard, a dresser drawer, or a toy box that could use a good cleaning and sorting. Clean everything out. Start sorting. Put back only the things that belong. Throw out the trash. Put the items that do not belong back where they do. Presto! You have a clean cupboard that can be used as it was intended!

The same thing happened not once, but twice during Jesus' time here on earth. When He first began his ministry, He found his Father's house, the Temple, had turned from being a place of prayer into a place of cheating would be worshippers. He decided to clean house (John 2:13-25).

The day after Palm Sunday, Jesus returned to the Temple once again and found that merchants had overtaken parts of the Temple that were meant for people to come to God. Not only that, they were once again cheating people in His Father's house! Time to clean house again. He made a whip and began to clear out the places where thieving merchants were stealing and deceiving people. Once again, His Father's house, and this special area, was restored to prayer. What was so special about this place? This is where those who weren't Jewish could freely come and worship God. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, Jewish and Non-Jewish Gentiles. 

And once again, As Jesus stood there seeing His Father's house restored to prayer, as the the sweat poured out, the scent of the nard from a few days ago began to fill the space around him. Now His Father's house was as it should be: cleaned out! Now the place  for sinners to come to pray and worship had been restored. I'd like to think He smiled 😊

Passion Week: Palm Sunday-The Triumphal Entry

Activity: Gather a paper towel roll (or two if you want to challenge someone!), something small to eat like mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips, or even cereal like Cheerios or Fruit Loops. Now have fun watching the video below.

People were so focused on Jesus being the king they wanted they missed Him being the Savior they needed. So the same people who praised Him with Hosannas, would be shouting "Crucify Him!" in a few days time. Like looking through a tube, they could only see the narrow focus of the now and their wants, not the eternity and the why of His coming: atonement, forgiveness, for their sins. 

Date Palms

So today, take time to praise Jesus as the coming King (think of the scent filling the room). Shout "Hosanna!", but remember that Hosanna means "to rescue, to save"... And that, my friends, is why Jesus came ❤

Passion Week: Palm Sunday Eve

Activity: With your parent's permission , spray just a small amount of perfume or air freshener in the air. Wait a moment. Can you smell it? Does it seem to get stronger as you wait? Does it seem to go away? Then leave the room for a few minutes, then come back in. Can you smell it, even faintly?

Our prayers of praise and thanks are like that perfume. On this night, the day before Jesus went into Jerusalem riding on a colt, He was at a dinner. Lazarus, whom Jesus had just raised from the dead, was one of the guest of honor. His grateful sister Martha used her talent of hospitality to show her thankfulness that evening to Jesus and served the guests. Mary, his other very grateful sister, also had a special way to thank Jesus planned. She took a jar of nard and anointed Jesus' head and feet as act of worship. The scent filled the room...in fact the scent filled the week. It would have been so strong it would have been smelled on Him all throughout Holy Week...Palm Sunday, In the Temple, Before Pilate, on the Cross, and Wrapped in the Tomb!

Our praise is that way: People can tell it on us! There is just something different that just can't figure out: Our gratefulness and praise to our God who is more than worthy (and we can let them in on our secret 🙂 ).

Activity: Write a praise list. Start off with 10 items of praise. Add 10 more the next day, 10 more the next...in only 10 day you'll have 100 things and in 100 days you have 1000! Take the 1000 Praise Challenge and see how that changes the "scent" of your week!

The Habit of Thankfulness: A Few of My Favorite Things

 Sept 5th- A few of my favorite things...

~Berry bushed that blossom into fall

~Berries that grow in abundance as most fruits are waning

~Sampling dewberries into September