Today is Good Friday. It’s a day Christians are called to remember the sacrifice Jesus made that we might welcome the true mysteries and wonders of love. In remembering, there is the hope that we might decide to live life less selfishly and with more devotion to the causes of God. It is a somber day, a day when we look into the face of great injustice, violence, grief, and the frailities and fragmentations of the human spirit, and we mourn that centuries after the death of Christ… we are still hurting one another.
We, who have grown up in the church, annually engage with the sadness of Good Friday, the weary mourning of Saturday, and then the jubilant celebration of new life Easter Sunday morning. The problem is in our day to day living we can easily become lost in the burdens that rise up so regularly. We find Good Friday in the news again and again as we divide and conquer rather than unite and serve. We bury the children. We warehouse the aged. We turn our backs on the marginalized while we revere the noise of wealth and power. We forget that we are created in the image of God and that image is beautiful, holy, and wise.
This morning, I found a blackbird feather in my front yard. So strikingly black on the ground, it felt like a symbol of this day of sadness. Yet, as I picked it up, the black gave way to the irredescent blues that caught the light and sparkled, and I found myself smiling at God’s creativity and compassion. We do not need to remain a broken people. We need not stay at the foot of the grave or tomb and believe this is the end of the story. We need only to turn towards the light to catch a glimpse of the fullness of life. Christ is with us. Christ is within us. May Christ be found in our living, in our loving, and in our determination to help one another on our way to Easter morning.
We, who have grown up in the church, annually engage with the sadness of Good Friday, the weary mourning of Saturday, and then the jubilant celebration of new life Easter Sunday morning. The problem is in our day to day living we can easily become lost in the burdens that rise up so regularly. We find Good Friday in the news again and again as we divide and conquer rather than unite and serve. We bury the children. We warehouse the aged. We turn our backs on the marginalized while we revere the noise of wealth and power. We forget that we are created in the image of God and that image is beautiful, holy, and wise.
This morning, I found a blackbird feather in my front yard. So strikingly black on the ground, it felt like a symbol of this day of sadness. Yet, as I picked it up, the black gave way to the irredescent blues that caught the light and sparkled, and I found myself smiling at God’s creativity and compassion. We do not need to remain a broken people. We need not stay at the foot of the grave or tomb and believe this is the end of the story. We need only to turn towards the light to catch a glimpse of the fullness of life. Christ is with us. Christ is within us. May Christ be found in our living, in our loving, and in our determination to help one another on our way to Easter morning.
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