April 2017 Magazine Letter
Dear Everyone,
First of all I will wish you a prayerful and thoughtful Holy Week and a joyous and Happy Easter.
For several years, when my sister and I were 10ish and 12ish we used, on Good Friday and Easter Day, to arrange a tableau on our sideboard.
My older sister had the ideas and I helped. One Maundy Thursday evening my parents were able to hear, from another room, as we prepared secretly for the Good Friday scene. We were making Jesus’ cross. I was supposed to be holding steady two round bits of wood while my sister hammered a nail to secure them. The heated shouts of “If you don’t hold them still I will hit you with this hammer”, and my tearful reply that they kept jumping every time she hit the nail, must have sounded most unsuitable for the task in hand. I think eventually she realised that it was easier to tie them together.
I wonder if we will ever understand how much shouting, hammering and pain Jesus put up with for all our sakes, and how much love He had for us that He became subjected to death on the cross. How can we begin to repay such love.
The scene we eventually arranged had figures on each of the three crosses. These were made of glitter wax which was a sort of plasticine.
On Good Friday, when the sun shone on these figures they wriggled in quite a realistic way. It was quite unnerving. We always had wallflowers in the scene and even now the scent reminds me of what we did.
On Easter Day we had daffodils surrounding an empty tomb with linen clothes inside. This scene was never a problem to construct, and by then the trauma for us of Maundy Thursday was over. We were able to rejoice with Jesus rising from the dead …and the prospect of an Easter egg for breakfast. (we were only children)
May we walk through this life, with our risen Lord beside us, guiding us in all we do and say.
God bless us in all ways and always,
Audrey B
