This year is unique for me. Normally, I pay as little attention to holidays as possible; if I didn’t have kids, I might not do any kind of celebrating at all, aside from taking a day or two off. It’s borderline Scrooge-like behavior.
But I’ve decided to create an EP of four to six songs in the first part of 2021, and Easter is my deadline to have it written and produced. And since Easter is my deadline, I thought, why not use that as an underlying theme for the tracks on the EP?
Hence the uniqueness: Whereas in the past I’ve waited until the last minute to even think about Easter, this year I’ve been thinking about it since January. How did the whole week before Jesus’ death play out? Who were the key players? And who were the people involved that we rarely even think about? And how did everything that happened affect them?
For example, we’ve all read about Peter’s betrayal of Jesus, but what about the other disciples? I’ve just been thinking about what they must have been feeling the day after the crucifixion. They had just devoted roughly three years of their lives to this person. They had seen numerous miracles that seemed to prove that this was the Christ, and after the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, it seemed certain that they were about to see Israel restored, with Jesus as the new king.
Then, in what must have seemed like the blink of an eye, everything went sideways.
If it was me, what would I have been feeling? Lost and unsure of my future, of course; I’d been planning on being part of something big, but now I’d have to go back to fishing / tax collecting / living at home with my parents (or whatever). I’d feel isolated. Maybe angry.
But definitely betrayed.
I’d just invested years into something bigger than myself, and the person I’d put my trust in was now dead. My dreams were dead. Jesus had proven that he was something special, time after time. Why had God allowed him to die?!? Or if he was truly the Son of God, why had he allowed himself to die?!? And why was I such a fool, to allow myself to believe that he could truly be the Messiah, the One that had been promised?!?
We know the rest of the story, but pause there for a second. It’s important. Without allowing ourselves to experience the depth of that feeling of betrayal, how can we understand the feeling of the hope reborn, of the joy that the disciples and believers must have felt upon learning of the empty tomb, upon seeing the resurrected Christ?
That’s why at least a couple of the tracks I’m creating for this EP try to capture that feeling of betrayal, of hopelessness.
I’m looking forward to sharing it with you, and I hope that you’ll come on this journey with me.
-Russ
ArcaynWays