Today is Thursday!  Are you impressed that I know that?  I am.  Forgive my boasting, but I think this is a big deal, since I woke up thinking it was Saturday.  And yesterday, I spent most of the day thinking it was Thursday.  And I did the same for the day before!  So I think knowing at this moment that today is Thursday is worth celebrating!  (I am sorry if you are reading this on a day that is not Thursday…this must not be helping!)

In conversations with others I have found that I am not alone in my experience, which gives me a certain level of comfort.  But I suspect that psychologists would tell us this is a normal experience for people in confinement, like prisoners.  This thought is not as comforting.

As nice is it is to know that I am not alone, better still is to know that I have someone with me who can be sympathetic to my situation, but is also capable of handling my situation too!

Today is not just Thursday.  It is Maundy Thursday.  A day when Christians around the world remember that Jesus gathered with His twelve disciples and washed their feet and instituted the Lord’s Supper.  It is the day that Jesus would be betrayed and the day before He would be executed.

And Jesus knew it.  Jesus knew what day it was.  Listen to His words leading up: “Now is my soul troubled.  And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But for this purpose I have come to this hour.  Father glorify your name” (John 12:27-28a).  Jesus was aware of what was drawing near.  And on the night He would be betrayed the Scripture says, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (John 13:1).  He knew that death was ahead of Him.  And as He prayed for Himself and His disciples he would utter, “Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).  Jesus knew what day it was; He knew what was coming.

And Jesus, as He faced that hour, was “greatly distressed and troubled” (Mark 14:33).  Jesus knew that there would be great physical pain and suffering, and also for His soul as He would become sin for us and be forsaken from His good Father of life.  I cannot even begin to imagine what this was like.  And in the midst of it Christ prayed, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.  Remove this cup from me.  Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36).  Jesus knew what was coming and it was horrible.  Yet He was willing to endure it.  He was able to step forward.  The Scripture says that Jesus ”who, for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).  Jesus knew what day it was and was able to endure it till the end.

As you and I sit in a day of uncertainty, struggling to even know what day of the week it is, we need not be alone in it.  We can turn to the risen Lord and Savior who sits at the right hand of the Father, and ask Him to strengthen us and prepare us for what lies ahead.  And He is able to do so.  The Father did it for Christ, and Christ who promises to be with us till the end, can do it for us as well. 

Therefore we do not simply rejoice in the fact that today is Thursday.  We rejoice that the God of life is with us in it, and will give us what we need to face whatever comes.

Praise God for His goodness today!