by Joy Lenton
It’s Good Friday. A day unlike any other, as the universe holds its breath. A day filled with sombreness and suspense. And a day when history became reshaped by Christ, His life, witness and death—and rising again to newness of life for us.
A grisly cross miraculously became the greatest ever revelation of divine love. The harrowing death which Jesus undertook on our behalf completely restored our broken relationship with Father God, thus making us His adopted children by our faith in Christ.
In his Rule, St. Benedict tells the monks to “Keep death daily before your eyes.” This invites us into remembrance of our own mortality so we might learn to live with a heightened awareness and deeper gratitude for the wonder, preciousness and brevity of the gift of life itself.
Today, of all days, perhaps, let us not forget, brush aside or hurry past the agony Christ endured. Let us linger and look. Let us try to put ourselves in the place of a spectator to the crucifixion of Christ and ponder these things in our hearts.
It will be hard. It was a brutal act. But maybe, just maybe, revisiting the scene will fill us with awe and gratitude for this hugely symbolic, holy and wholly sacrificial act. And cause us to marvel anew at all that Jesus went through for the love of you and me.
The Cross is the ultimate evidence that there is no length the love of God will refuse to go in effecting reconciliation.” — R. Kent Hughes
pixabay.com
Making history
This is no tickle on the timber
but a brutal nailing, a pounding
piercing of tender flesh,
with tendons tautly stretched
to their limit, but no breaking
of his bones takes place.
This is no cheap public sideshow
to fill in a gap before you need
to get home again, but a tense
execution wrought in writhing
agony and pain, with blood flowing
freely like red rivulets of rain.
This is no private spectacle
but an eternal moment etched
in our history, a time when time
itself stands still, and heaven weeps,
while Jesus willingly surrenders
to his Father’s glorious will.
This is not a macabre moment
to be shuddered at and forgotten
about, but one to linger over,
as we seek to understand and glean
the truth of its necessity for you
and me—and how it sets us free.
© joylenton
Only in the Cross of Christ will we receive power when we are powerless. We will find strength when we are weak. We will experience hope when our situation is hopeless. Only in the Cross is there peace for our troubled hearts.” — Michael Youssef
A.W. Tozer – christianquote.info
2 comments
Perhaps, I thought this about the cross when I meditated on the women who cried out: “Let His blood be on us and our children.” Matthew 27 v 25.: I AM A DESCENDANT OF THEIR CHILDREN. I can say this because of the many people who say such as this: :’He paid a debt He did not owe. I owed a debt I could not pay! He washed my sins away. Now I sing a brand new song: ‘Amazing grace how sweet the sound’; He paid the debt He did not owe.”
When I realized this I began to weep when I thought about all the stripes on His back that must have been more painful than the nails and crown of thorns since those stripes covered much more skin than these!
Herbert, thank you for your thoughtful response. It’s hard not to weep when we reflect on the depths of God’s love for us and Jesus Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross to suffer and die for our sin and restore us to a right relationship with our heavenly Father. Those stripes He received on His back must have been severely painful and cruel. Amazing grace, indeed!