Good Friday Thoughts

We avoid lament and sorrow at all costs. We want to skip over the hard, the grief, the silence. Even today, we keep reminding ourselves and others … Sunday’s coming! … like dangling a toy in front of an inconsolable baby to distract them from what they honestly feel and are experiencing. I feel the urge myself. Sometimes, I dangle Easter chocolate to distract myself.

But today is Friday, friends. Good Friday. Holy Friday. Today’s invitation is to sit with the suffering Christ, the scattered and defeated disciples, the darkness and suffering within us and around us. Oh, how we can relate to not understanding what is happening, confused by what God is doing. We, too, have been ambushed by accusatory mobs who were friends a few days ago. We, too, have felt the suffocating waves of grief.

The followers of Jesus didn’t know Sunday was coming. They had been told, but they did not understand. They could not understand. How dark and scary these hours and days must have been for them.

We live in the tension of Good Friday and Silent Saturday throughout our lives. There are things we do not understand. Things we cannot understand even though we’ve been told. Not everything real and true is known or seen by us, and we don’t always understand what God is doing.

We are Easter people, but we are Good Friday people, too. When we refuse to rush to Sunday, when we learn to sit in the tension, the sorrow, and the suffering between what is and what will be one day, Christ is forming us into people of deep faith who embrace suffering without becoming defeated by suffering, people who sit with suffering and find Christ sitting right alongside us.

Today is Good Friday, but …. but nothing. Today is Good Friday. That is the invitation for today, friends.