Praise God for the Via Dolorosa!

Praise God, His redemption price was paid for me! Surveying the Wondrous Cross is a blessed meditation for Good Friday. Surveying the hymns and meditations of those who have come before us is also a worthy meditation.

"Were the whole realm of nature mine, It were a present far too small, love so amazing so divine, Demands my life, my soul, my all"

The realm of nature that is mine is really God's and he lends it to us. How do we present it to God as a blessing to Him? How can we build anything for God? We can't, all we can do is rejoice that He is in charge of what we can't control. This is bigger than me, God, we exclaim. "Praise Him, Oh Lord I will praise Him" and I will glorify His name with what I have charge of. In that way we are already unified with creation to praise the one true and living Creator!

In direct opposition to Heidi's grandfather, who gave up living for the loss of his dearest daughter, is my imagination of the Heavenly Father. Grandfather's grief could not be abated and God used dear Heidi child to draw him outside of his grief, in the story.

God is always, always seeking ways to avert the judgments that our sins call upon ourselves. He will be entreated on every hand and He shows in His Word that here and there and all over the scriptures, this corporate sin called for stripes and this is only as far as I would let that judgment fall on the people. Only the hand of mercy holds up the judgment from off of our heads.

"With tender hand, from shades of night to blades of light, Oh praise his name, He's lifting us up.

" We can know that He holds the realms of nature and the situations that we are in, in His very considerate care. He draws us close to Himself in good providences, but in the dire providences, I have found Him, even closer.

As I lay unable to even breathe or see purpose in the ticking of the clock to another second past that moment, He was there and He was giving me a sense of being in his very hand. He emotionally brings me to myself, when the grief strikes me again and again. He has a worse grief for those who are apart from Him.

Lord, had you been here, my son would not have died, I say, in my grief to Him every Easter. He says to me, I am the resurrection and the life, He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. I get it in a new way every year. And every year I walk through that dark valley of remembrance, only to find newer and newer expressions of His loving purposes in every step. I hate the process, but I love my Savior's great love.