The Joys of an Exultant Good Friday!

He Is Risen! He Is Risen!

Even on Good Friday, it is true that the price of our redemption has been paid by Christ! Sometimes we think that if we meditate on the passion of Christ enough it will help us to appreciate the price of our Salvation. He paid it all! Every drop of the cup of the wrath of God is drunk by our Lord Jesus on our behalf. We are redeemed and we are not paying Him back by suffering with Him on Good Friday or for the 40 days. We are not investing partly in our redemption by doing so.

I fear that so often I have been guilty of needing to flagellate myself because I felt that Jesus required it from me for some part that He hadn't accomplished. Maybe I am not really grateful if I don't do the stations and follow him foot to foot in His sacrifice, or follow every word of the seven last words to the furthest point. Am I paying part? Am I understanding the gravity of my deserts? If I am doing the former, I am deceived. If I am learning the latter, I am in the rights. It is not the doing or the not doing, but why that is important. I cannot pay God for my redemption. I cannot invest part in my Salvation. I cannot ever fully understand. But I can rejoice in spirit, like the man born blind and be in the right. Or I can sit sullen and identify with my Savior and know that I didn't deserve what He bore and ask for the grace to rejoice, when it truly sinks in. Both are right responses, depending on your growth in grace.

Don't judge your sullen neighbor or your hedonistic brother, when you are not in his shoes.

Certain details of the funeral day are clear as day 29 years later and some of them pale!

I recall the beauty and the comfort of beautiful people with groceries to feed the people. I remember the delight of sitting next to my father in the front row of church, which would never happen again. I remember the pain in my deepest soul and the questions without answers, that kept my knees quivering and kept me from standing up for the wobble.

Most of all, I remember the sound of a mighty congregation singing that breathed strength into my wobbly knees, to get up and worship God in my darkest hour. I will never forget that wonder. There is power on earth to breathe strength into the faint and it is a corporate strength. I am eternally grateful to God for that strength and prayer that saves the weakest and faintest cry.

Each year, God takes me into the dark cave of my grief to give me new strength to march on in Grace and Confidence of His Love. I never look forward to the entering and I never want to leave the cave, once I am in there. It is a fiery entrance, a piercing and anxiety-producing entrance. The cave is dark behind it, but God always meets me there. He seems to explain His uses of means to hold me up and uses of pain to draw me to Him, but never answering the multiple questions. They become insignificant, in His presence. Sometimes it is a loud praise that comes out of the cave and sometimes it is a silent wonder. Sometimes, like Mary, I have a magnificat and sometimes like Zacharias I am struck dumb. But, it is always an amazing and love-filled interaction with my Dearest Friend and confidant, the Lord. He is still walking me through the griefs of life, I don't always like it. But I love Him each day for being there with me.

I stand by the graveside, in my heart for the entire month and ask and ask and the silence on that front is deafening. You would think that I would have stopped asking, by now. My heart can't stop asking. My heart is in the many pieces and God holds it in front of me and breathes on it and puts it back in my chest. Just keep breathing and marching and there are more answers to come and more battles to fight. That is always the answer to my questions.