Transcript
Speaker: The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members -only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
Speaker: Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The normal goes a long way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation. We are approaching the final days of Holy Week. Today is Saturday and today is a day of waiting.
Speaker: Please join Laura Fleetwood now as she leads us through another guided prayer in this Holy Week. Welcome to Saturday of Holy Week as we intentionally participate in guided prayer to draw close to Jesus. Tomorrow is Easter. Yesterday was Good Friday. Today is the in -between.
Speaker: So let's center ourselves on the present moment, bring ourselves to focus on the here and the now. Focus on the breath to let go of anything that happened yesterday or earlier today that might get in the way of our time with God today.
Speaker: When we focus on the breath that God has given us, it helps us to center and to come to this moment, this moment where he needs us.
Speaker: Your thoughts may be bouncing around and that's okay. Just bring your focus back to your breath again and again and again. Let's see what God's word from John has to say today.
Speaker: the burial of Jesus. Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders.
Speaker: With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds.
Speaker: Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it with the spices and strips of linen. This was in accordance with the Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden and in the garden, a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Speaker: Lord, help us to live in this in between today. We know that you will rise from the dead. And yet today help us to
Speaker: wonder and experience and think about what your followers must have felt. What they had just seen and witnessed
Speaker: to go from walking with you and seeing you perform miracles to watching you be arrested and tried and to not defend yourself and to be wrongly convicted and to be hung on a cross and brutally murdered. Lord, they were probably very sad and very disturbed and distraught
Speaker: Confused. Isn't it interesting that that's often the way we describe ourselves on an ordinary day. Discouraged, confused, distraught.
Speaker: But Lord, you made a way, you made a way on Easter and you make a way in our own lives. So today on the in -between days, as we wait, as we wait for the celebration and the resurrection, would you please place in our minds and on our hearts a specific circumstance that we have been dealing with?
Speaker: in which we have felt the way that your followers felt after your death. Is there something we're going through, Lord, that you want to bring up right now? And is there some way you want to show us how we've been living
Speaker: in the hope of the world and in ourselves instead of in the hope of you and what you can accomplish in this situation.
Speaker: Because just like you were died and you were restored, there's so much in our lives that end, that die, that go away. But they can also be restored in new ways. Because as your life shows, Lord, you don't waste anything.
Speaker: Good can be made of any situation, Lord. Help us to remember that. Help us to cling to that on these in -between days when the struggle just seems overwhelming. Help us to remember that Easter is coming.
Speaker: That hope and resurrection can be just around the corner. And even if not in this life, certainly in the next, when we will be with you forever. Fill us with these promises today, Lord Jesus. And whatever this heavy thing is that we're hearing,
Speaker: Help us to lay it down, to lay it down at your feet, and help us to watch it get small as you pick it up in your hands. And help us to keep it there with you and not take it back, but to trust you.
Speaker: have faith in you and to love you always. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
