We have wrapped up another Christian year with Easter tomorrow. This has been what is called holy week starting with Palm Sunday. The holy week timeline goes as follows.

Palm Sunday represents the day that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. Thursday is supposed to be the last supper. Friday is the day of the crucifixion. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, which is Easter. That is a lot of things crammed into one week. I suspect that the actual timeline was a bit longer, particularly between arrest, conviction and death.

For those weaker on their doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus is God fulfilling his promise that the death of Jesus begins a new relationship between man and God. That is often referred to as the ‘New Covenant’. The old covenant was actually the Jewish religion. The difference between the two being that humans had relationship with God through a priest in the Jewish faith versus each person having relationship in the Christian faith. And with that, there is a shift between a fear, anger and punishment oriented God to a love and forgiveness God. At least this is my Protestant view of all that.

That makes tomorrow Easter, and traditionally a day of celebration. With the quarantine underway, we will be having a family oriented dinner, easter egg hunt, church on YouTube. It wont be the same, but it will be in line with tradition.

We are in the midst of our own new covenant. The state has decided not to reconvene school this year. With that, seniors are considered complete in their academic year. Our own exchange student who is a senior is now done with school. And with that, it is time to go home.

So the family dynamic which has grown so nicely over the year is about to change. We always knew that this day would come, it is a lot earlier than we expected and it certainly didn’t go the way that we expected. In a way we were lucky because we got a little more time with Sergio than a lot of host families did. Most programs recalled their students the week of spring break. He is the only exchange student that I am aware of that is still here.

Thursday morning, he will be on his way back home and we will be officially relieved of our duties take care of another child. We are all feeling a little sad about it. With that ending, another new beginning can occur. We will see what that is.