How Awesome is that Day to Me

It’s official… Holy Week is here - beginning with Palm Sunday yesterday, continuing with many events throughout the week, and concluding with Easter Sunday.  I am in love with all the colors that this season and week bring - all the greens, yellows, pinks, and purples are so cheery!  This week, however, I’m trying to focus less on flowers and food preparations and more on making Holy Week holy unto the Lord, as John Piper so aptly put it.  (Check out his Desiring God blog for recommended readings during Holy Week.)
 
Besides church yesterday, our family also had the opportunity to participate in a “Journey to the Cross” event at our church.  This was a very meaningful time of reflection on the events leading up to and including the death and resurrection of Christ.  We had a simple stew meal together and then individuals or families made their way through 13 stations throughout the church in which there was some sort of visual or tangible display and a Scripture reading.  At each station we were encouraged to focus on and pray about different areas of application for each of these events.  It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced and I am truly grateful for the opportunity to have participated in it. 

As I have continued this morning to ponder the final events in the life of Christ leading up to his death and resurrection, and as I have been planning out a few things that I personally will be concentrating on, I came across this poem that I thought was so fitting for this week.  I hope this is on the forefront of your mind and is the prayer of your heart this week. 

How awesome is that day to me-
O day of hallowed history!
Set time in God’s determined plan
To sacrifice the Son of Man.
What famous work that day was done
By Jesus Christ, His Perfect Son!
The Second Adam, sent to save,
Humbly obeying to the grave!

How savage is that day to me-
O day of pure brutality!
When Christ, the Son of God Most High,
Was fiercely whipped and hung to die.
And O the horror of my sin,
Seen there in His appalling skin!
For God struck down- as meant for me-
The sinless One, at Calvary.

How precious is that day to me-
O day of purchased liberty!
In Him, a freeman now I live;
My sins, through death, did God forgive.
No wrath at length looms o’er my head,
But lovingkindness there instead.
His righteousness, my guilt replaced,
And Love, this ransomed soul embraced!

O awesome, savage, precious day-
‘Tis God the Savior on display!
What peerless, holy, gracious Mind
Would fashion such a Grand Design?

Kevin Hartnett works for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, overseeing the science operations activities of the mission. He was selected in 2003 from a thousand candidates as the “Poet of the Year” by the Fellowship of Christian Poets.

Have a blessed Holy Week!

~ Carrie ~