Good Friday.

As I do each Easter week, I quieted. 

I told my spirit, 'ponder.  sit.  listen.'

And we did, spirit and I, together.

 

I reflected on this, Good Friday. 

I thought much about the crucifixion.  The garden of gethsemane.  The knowing in His heart and the knowing of the Father.  The helplessness of a mother, of all those that loved him.  The weeping he did over his friend Lazarus and his dead body; the friend he loved and loved deeply.  I thought long and hard about the weeping.  The sorrow.  The story. 

The utter and crushing truth of what this very day held for my One True Love, Jesus.

The heaviness always overtakes me. 

 

The days leading up to Easter are brutal for my spirit in the most convicting and altering ways.  I purpose myself to walk through it in my mind, over and over. 

I think about it.  I cry over it.  I wrestle with it.

 

Blood and wire and lashing and tears and sweat and yelling and hatred and longing and love and brutality and heroics and sacrifice and betrayal and judgment and submission and anger and peace and purpose and surrender and heaviness and yielding and life ending.

 

For life beginning.

Life everlasting.

Live eternal.

For you.  And for me.

 

It swallows me whole.  The entire portrait of the one true God-man who stole my heart.  His life story is beautiful and tragic and victorious.  I often wonder if He questioned, like I do, his life and the ultimate totality of what it meant for this world. 

I wonder if Jesus, the human God, ever thought to himself that while yes, He would die for the salvation of humanity, if given the option, He maybe would have chosen differently. 

 

But then I see Him. 

A striking 33 years old, in the prime of his manhood.  And He chooses the cross. 

He could have chosen differently. 

And even if He couldn't have chosen a different path or a different outcome, He surely could have chosen a different way to handle it. 

 

But He didn't.

Instead, He splintered His own back, carrying a heavy, rugged, scraping tree so that you and I could live free in a world full or torturous, horrendous, unspeakable sin.

And experience grace.  And truth.  And hope.  And life. 

 

They split open His body until the blood and the bones matched the pavement beneath Him.  Until everything inside was outside. He was negated to less than a shell of a man. 

He was humiliated, brutalized and tortured beyond recognition. 

His mother was watching. 

 

And on this day she stood beneath her child as they hoisted from the ground to the sky, her son on a tree above a crowd that was taunting and defiling Him in every unimaginable way. 

It is horrific. 

It is true.

And it humbles me to tears. 

 

A mother's love.  A child's sacrifice.  A crowd full of people whose spirits were wrecked; some holy-wrecked and some blind to the holy.  It troubles me and it's conflicting. 

But ultimately, it's a beautiful glimpse into the heart of our Savior.  It's a beautiful reminder that on a very typical day for the rest of the world, one man [the true God] gave His LIFE.

He gave it up.  And He did so at the promise that we would be set free. 

 

So that when I woke up on this Good Friday morning and walked into the room where my baby was seizing in her sleep, I didn't have to be overtaken by fear or worry.  He did it so that I could rest in the knowing that if she meets Him today, it will be forever. 

And I will join them in a Heavenly place one day. 

So that I could have hope of the restoration of her body, and her spirit with a Father who adores her.  So that this life on earth could pale in comparison to the eternal place of rest she will find in Heaven. 

And so that, in so many ways, I could long for that for her.

And for me.

And for you.

So that we could find total and full peace in life after this world. 

In a Savior's promise and sacrifice.

In a God who gave it all.

Who felt it all.

Who was, in reflection, so much like you and I.

The man who was God.

Who was everything.

Who is.

And is to come.

 

Today, I think about His dying. 

And in just a few I will think and reflect and be honored at his rising.

His love is so much more than enough.

 

Happy Good Friday, friends.

May you feel Him around you today.