contemplation

Holy Week marks the end of the road for Jesus.

The final week of his earthly ministry. The culmination of all the previous years. The coming to fruition of all the seeds of salvation he'd been careful to sow across the countless months of ministry. The end.

There was a lot that was packed into eight short days. The fuse had been lit in days long gone. These were the sticks of dynamite, the eight short days that would blow to bits the pompous preconceptions people had and see the kingdom of God explode into the kingdoms of this earth.

The way we mark this Holy Week affords us quiet moments in our busy lives to pause and take it in. The week is gently punctuated with times for praise and prayer.

Today, not least, is the point in the week when this contemplative course kicks in.

The mid-week, mid-day service, rounding off a whole long stretch of services each week through which we've slowly followed Jesus' path towards Jerusalem, towards his cross, towards his solitary, final sacrifice.

Today we shared the bread and wine. The simple meal in which the broken bread and wine direct our hearts and minds towards that costly giving of himself, whereby the Lord secured for us, so freely, our truest, fullest welfare - for eternity.

At night we had again the chance to pause and follow through the journey to the cross.

The thing is called The Stations of the Cross. It's a 14-step reflection on the path that Jesus took.

Not a thing to which I'm that accustomed. And thus a thing I struggle to engage in as I should.

There are icons for each of the 'stations'. And by and large, if truth be told, the only sort of icons I'm familiar with are those on my computer. Which doesn't really help.

The sort of icons involved in the thing tonight are from a very different world from that in which I mostly do my living. I have to cross some borders, as it were, and enter into what is still a rather foreign land so far as I'm concerned.

But the challenge it brings is a challenge I need.

The skills of contemplation which this discipline requires are skills I need to cultivate and learn. They're mainly fairly alien to the culture I'm familiar with.

My mind and heart and thoughts all focused on a single little moment on that pain-filled, dark and dreadful path that Jesus trod: and with the slow reflection which our pausing at each 'station' brings, a window onto avenues of truth I need to see.

Truth which always challenges. Truth which always comforts. Truth which always draws me near to Christ.

It's the one day in the year that I'm exposed to such a discipline. And years on down the line I still don't find it easy to apply my mind like this.

The icons and responses from the gathered congregation are distracting for a guy like me. I feel I somehow need more time, more space; more solitude, more silence. More practice at the discipline involved.

But it's good for me to be out of my depth, and in some ways quite lost. It reminds me of my state before almighty God.

Lost. And, at best, no more than a humble learner.