Good Friday

I’ve thought about Good Friday so much recently, mainly about the heartbreak our Heavenly Father experienced that dark Friday.  So much of this day is focused on Jesus’s suffering and while our salvation depends on it, I feel like it’s not the entire story.  I can just imagine heaven standing still that Friday, watching with a heavy silence what Jesus endured on the cross. That thought alone is enough to break my heart but my humanness can only comprehend a small piece of that pain.

I read this quote in the book called A Symphony in the Dark, Hearing God’s voice in Seasons of Grief that really put words to some emotions I’ve experienced in regards to Jesus’s death.

 “God knows what it is like to have to sit by and watch a beloved only child die.”  Morna Comeau

I’ve thought about how God’s heart must have broken into a million pieces watching his son die a terrible death, when he didn’t deserve any of it.  I know my heart broke into a million of pieces as I watched Seth’s tiny body fight for oxygen, slowly turning blue, but he was nestled in my arms a place of love and comfort.  How much more heartbreaking our Father experienced watching his son take on the sins of the world.  To be insulted, spit on, mocked, punished with a crime he didn’t commit and to watch him take his final breath not nestled in his sweet comforting arms but on a cross, the punishment designed for criminals.  This shows me what a big heart the Lord has for each of us.  As difficult it was for Jesus to endure this, our heavenly Father had to restrain himself and let it all happen, for the good of all of us.  What a sacrifice that was made on our behalf.  What a gift friends, what a gift.

 “An innocent man laden with my guilt and shame, bound so I can be free, dying so I can live.  Somehow it seems appropriately paradoxical that this dark day would be called ‘Good Friday'......Sinners purified, dead people made alive is the paradoxical beauty of the Cross-our only hope for healing in this hurting, confining world.”  Nancy Guthrie One Year Book of Hope.

 
What a Good Friday this is and just think HOPE is around the corner.