On my birthday last week, Bryan asked me after dinner, “What are the Bible verses about Maundy Thursday?” When I tried to dig deeper into what he was looking for, he said that he wanted to know where the Maundy Thursday story was in all four of the gospels.
So, I trudged upstairs to get my well-thumbed ‘Bible In One Year’, as I like to read a scriptural lesson each day. Well, this made it a little tricky to find all of the New Testament lessons amidst the Old Testament, Psalms and Proverbs entries. You see, for each date, there are scriptures in each of those four categories of the books of the Bible. The idea is that by the end of the year you will have read the entire Bible. Which I’ve done. Multiple times. And I’m STILL learning new things every year!
Once I was seated back at the dining room table, Bryan got out his notebook paper and pen. He had already written the headings for each of the days of Holy Week he wished to study. We started with Palm Sunday – today. He wasn’t much interested in that day, because he kind of knew what that story was by heart.
When we got to Maundy Thursday, and I explained about the Last Supper and Gethsemane and the events following, he perked up and scribbled down where to find the story in each of the gospels. (He really is quite adept at finding the books of the bible, chapter and verse. In fact, when the scripture is read in church, he would rather look it up in his OWN bible rather than view it projected onto a wall or written in the bulletin. This makes it tricky when the read scripture is a different version than his Bible!)
We continued this process for Good Friday and Easter. It took some time to complete. When I asked him what he was going to do with this information, he told me that he was going to look up all of the stories in each gospel and write them down. That will definitely take the two weeks he allotted! I’m sure that when he is done notating all, he will proudly show me his work – probably on Easter Sunday when he comes to our house for Easter dinner.
That got me to thinking. Those of us who are attending services or are aware of the various days during Holy Week and their import could do well to at least pick up the Bible and choose one of the gospels to read daily this week, walking along with Jesus and reliving those events – both the bad and the good – to ready ourselves for that most glorious of days – the resurrection of our Lord! Why not join Bryan in his scriptural journey?