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Focus on What is Holy | 2025 Lenten Devotional | Day 20

COURT
By Emma Jane

Your Holy court is the place I long to dwell
To sit at your feet, and pour out my sweet vessel

Like Mary who came before me, with everything to give
Your temple should be Holy without the sellers to make profit

The merchants who go at the fore in my soul I know them to bleat
Inattention to what is righteous and loud voices of greed

Oh Lord, wreck the temple I’ve built with all my foes and misbelief
Clean up my tainted way of being, for you are the purity

At Last, lead me to the Holy Court giving up fear and insecurity
Falling to worship you, giving you priority
Notes from Contributor: I wrote this poem to reflect the thoughts, feelings, and actions we
allow into our lives instead of focusing on what is Holy. Our inner desire should be aching to be like Jesus, and giving everything we have to him. However, often we focus on emotions such as greed, doubt, and our own insecurities instead of what Jesus offers us when we dwell in Him.

The illustration of Mary in John 12:3 has stuck with me because it’s a perfect example of laying down everything we have at the feet of Jesus, while others may scoff at our acts of generosity. Let us be a generous people, preventing our hearts from becoming unholy.

John 12: 3 
Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and
anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the
fragrance of the perfume.
John 2:13-24

Jesus in Jerusalem at Passover

13 It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 He found in the temple those who were selling cattle, sheep, and doves, as well as those involved in exchanging currency sitting there. 15 He made a whip from ropes and chased them all out of the temple, including the cattle and the sheep. He scattered the coins and overturned the tables of those who exchanged currency. 16 He said to the dove sellers, “Get these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a place of business.” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written, Passion for your house consumes me.

18 Then the Jewish leaders asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? What miraculous sign will you show us?”

19 Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.”

20 The Jewish leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?” 21 But the temple Jesus was talking about was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered what he had said, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

23 While Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, many believed in his name because they saw the miraculous signs that he did. 24 But Jesus didn’t trust himself to them because he knew all people.

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