Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind,

and make you brave. I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true,

and beautiful. So make yourself a cup of tea, find, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Speaking with Joy. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Speaking with Joy. Over the last few weeks, I've been

recording what I've called my Escapecast. Episodes on fascinating topics with fascinating people,

aiming to give you something true and beautiful and good, to help you escape the madness of this COVID-19

pandemic. But this week, I've been really excited to share this special episode with you,

where I want to invite you to escape into a story through a piece of music. I'm recording this on

Good Friday, and it's a beautiful day outside. Birds are chirping,

but I have a real ache and a real sadness that I think many of you could identify with,

which is that I'm missing being in church. This is the highest, holiest week for Christians.

It's Holy Week, as it is so fitly named when we celebrate first christ entering into jerusalem as as the king on

palm sunday all the way through to his crucifixion death and resurrection on easter and for me

something that's become increasingly precious is kind of living through the story

this week.

You know, many of us throughout this pandemic have been escaping into stories through mystery

novels and TV series.

But the amazing thing is that the church, for 2,000 years, has invited people to escape

into the story of Christ, specifically in this week.

Traditionally, there's kind of services on almost every day of the week to mark out this story.

So on Sunday we had Palm Sunday when Jesus rides in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem

as people lay down their palms declaring him the king of David.

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