Empty Week ~ First Sunday

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The very first "empty" was one we find hard to imagine: the formless and empty nature of the earth as God began His creative work, described in Genesis 1:2. The closest thing I can relate to this is the blackness of my nighttime room in my "little girl" memories. That was a big kind of darkness that I could feel, and yet it was so very small, and there were familiar things hidden in the shadows. Isaiah 45:18 declares that earth was not meant to be empty, and God filled the void with wonderful creations, even placing one… US! … in His own image.

From there, ugly emptiness entered, and that's where we start to identify more with the emptiness images … empty hands, empty eyes, empty words, empty promises.

• When Adam and Eve turned away from God's friendship, they had to leave their beautiful garden home, and it was left … Empty.
  

In the first five books of the Bible, God repeats His longing to fill emptiness, saying over and over that no one should appear before Him empty handed (ex. Ex. 23:15 and Deut. 16:16). God is a God who creates fullness where emptiness was. I can't wait to share a beautiful verse about this NEXT Sunday! I hope you'll be back to see it.

On the Sunday beginning what we think of as the "Passion Week," Jesus entered the crowded city of Jerusalem on a donkey. In preparation for the Passover, there wouldn't have been many empty spaces in the City of David, but there was emptiness in many hearts, despite the noise and the palm leaves and the shouts of "Hosanna!" 500 years before, an Old Testament prophet named Zechariah said that the promised King would come into Jerusalem just like that (Zech. 9:9).

Read the account in Matt. 21:1-17, Mark 11:1-11, or Luke 19:29-44.