Remembering Friday

It is all I can do to not cry through every Good Friday service. I didn’t grow up with a Good Friday service, and I love the tradition of setting aside time to contemplate what Jesus went through. It is so tempting to focus on the Resurrection. I want to dwell in the Happily Ever After. And yet it is so crucial to recognize, as Caz mentioned, that Jesus has endured everything we have. There is not a hardship he cannot empathize with. There is no physical, emotional, or spiritual pain we will experience that is greater than what He endured for us.

             There were three days that Jesus’ followers were left in devastation. Jesus could have been raised immediately and spared their suffering.  And yet God allows dark hours before the glorious light.  He allows silence when we desperately want answers.  We’re all off of our sugar high or bluebonnet flurry or whatever Easter was to you. Let us remember the sacredness of the dark, dark day our sins were paid for. Every sin. The sin we repeat even though we know better. The sin we never tell anyone.  The sins we are not even aware of. The sin still haunting us, even though we have repented.   Every sin.  We are washed clean. Let us live like it.

Beth Kropf

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static

Do not read Dallas Williard if you want to feel sorry for yourself and wallow in your difficulties. As I continue to read “Hearing God,” I am constantly confronted with my own shortcomings. He is talking about those who don’t hear God and possible reasons for that. In essence, he states that we need to be truly living for God to have any expectation that He would speak to us. (Williard does mention that God can certainly speak to those not following Him) Williard says “It may be that I have never come to the place where I can truly say ‘I am living for one thing and one thing only – be like Christ.’ … If we have not come to that place, then the question that normally arises as, How do we hear the word of God? is replaced for us by the prior question, What would we do if we heard the word of God?”

            I am thinking back to Caz’s sermon from the most recent series. He talked about the meal where Jesus was saying “Woe” to the Pharisees. What would Jesus say to you, if He spoke as plainly as a friend?  If God gave us direction, are we in a position where we would follow Him?  Are we holding on to something that might be keeping us from really hearing God? What is the static in our lives?  Are we allowing space in our day to hear God? I know I’m not, but I know God has wonderful things to tell me, and I don’t want to miss a thing.

Elizabeth Kropf

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