I like to think I wasn't a defiant kid. I like to think I was delightfully obedient in both the small tasks like going to sleep when asked or eating vegetables, and in the big ones like not hitting my sister or lying to my parents (to fact check me you might ask my mom).

As I contemplated writing about Tish Harrison Warren's chapter on losing keys, it immediately struck me as ironic—I hardly need my keys right now. I don't go anywhere. But Warren writes that losing keys shows us how we act when our plans are interrupted. I can cover up my sinfulness when all is going according to my plan, but when things are not, well, it is not so pretty. COVID-19 is not according to Valerie Tompson's plan.

City Church will begin a series of blogs reflecting on Tish Harrison Warren's book, Liturgy of the Ordinary. Our strange times are the farthest thing from ordinary, but her book explores the transformation that happens in the daily, monotonous rhythms of our lives. As many of us feel stuck doing all of life at home, we remember how all of life is worship.

The night before Jesus died he had dinner with his closest followers. That “last supper” gave rise to what we know of as the Eucharist (also called the Lord’s Supper and Holy Communion). Christians have often gathered on Thursday of Holy Week, called Maundy Thursday, to commemorate this important event and its lasting import to us. 

In these strange times, I have found comfort in reading John the Apostle. Not his accounts of strange creatures and odd visions that sound more like the Walking Dead or something from the Matrix, but the Gospel of John. John's account of the life of Jesus is apocalyptic in another sense—in John's same poetic language, his account of Jesus' life disrupts how I see the world, and in the person of Jesus, remakes creation.

City Church planned this waiting series before we fully grasped how drastically our lives would change over this Lenten season. At this point, I often wonder what I am waiting for each day. Am I waiting for more bad news, or will there be something hopeful? Am I waiting for something as simple as a check in text from friends I see regularly? Back in early March, when I said I would take this week's blog in our five-part series on Jesus' last days and write about how Jesus was stranded in the garden by his friends, I had no idea how relevant that term "stranding" would feel to our present reality.