On Good Friday...

My heart is often heavy on Good Friday, and not inordinately so, but such that I feel the weight of it (that sounds ludicrous...can we ever truly feel the weight of it; not likely, since that is what Jesus came into the world to take on our behalf), and it makes me think. 

I have been struggling today with so many things: things that are going on in our country (in my brain, it's all over the map - this is not a one-issue struggle), things that are going on in the world, the things that I leave undone, the things that I do and shouldn't, the things in which we as a family are lacking, the fact that I don't have a dinner plan (that might sound silly, but right at this moment, it is just one more manifestation of deep-seated problems which I need to address) (not just address, effect change).

As I thought about some of these issues, I came to the conclusion that because we humans are so messed up, pretty much everything we touch is going to be messed up, at least a little. And there is rarely an answer that is not complicated. Not that some things aren't black and white. But not everything is. And even if something is black and white, because the world is a broken place full of broken people, it almost never works itself out in day-to-day life as black or white as it should. 

During our Wednesday night class, our pastor encouraged us to remember that no matter what happens in the world, in our culture, in our lives, that Jesus still reigns. Nothing can change that. His exhortation echoed his words after the shooting in Newtown: we are never not safe, God is never not in control. Sometimes (okay, a whole big fat lot of the time) that is so incredibly hard to remember. Yet, we must! I must continue to name the ways that God has been and is bigger than any given problem, disagreement, catastrophe, or tragedy. Remembering what he has done helps us to remember what he will do.

He promised. 

On this Good Friday, a day that was made black as night and marred by the seeming forsakenness of God's only Son, we remember and cling to the promise..."[the woman's offspring] will crush [Satan's] head,/and [Satan] will strike his heel."

We remember that Sunday is coming. Sunday is coming...