Upper Room Unbooked

Upper Room Unbooked

(posted for the A to Z Challenge)

U is for Upper Room and Unbooked.

   On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?"

   So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him.

Say to the owner of the house he enters, 'The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there."

   The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

(Mark 14:12-15, NIV)

Today is Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday. This day, part of the annual Christian Holy Week, marks the occasion when Jesus shared the Last Supper with the 12 disciples. This momentous meal was actually a Passover Seder, celebrated in Jerusalem during one of the most crowded weeks of the year for that spot.

Where does God offer us the most holy and intimate moments of all? Do these divine appointments seem to come in crowded chaos or in spots of silence?

Where is your Upper Room? Where do you go for special encounters with God?

Upper Room Unbooked

My calendar’s full. Get in line.

No time for the bread or the wine.

Frustrations ensnare

Till I climb the stair

To privately offer my shrine.

No temple of gold does He ask.

I need not perform holy task.

Just stop – step apart –

And open my heart,

Removing my own feigning mask.

What intimacy may await?

How deeply may God then relate,

If schedules would pause

And hopes for applause?

Oh, may I arrive not too late!

Image:

Jesus Christ

19th Century German steel engraving

Public Domain – Copyright Expired