The Darkness Before the Dawn

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, Lord.

Tomorrow… Good Friday.  And my annual tradition — my own private viewing of “The Passion.”  The movie produced years ago by Mel Gibson.

It shakes me to the core every time I see it.

I want it to shake me.  I need it to shake me.  To remind me of why I am alive.

I don’t want simple, sanitized answers.  I want soul-shaking Truth.  In front of me in a way that denies me the luxury of complacence.

The phone has been touted as “the next best thing to being there.”  Had there been phones in Your day, Lord, would I have received a frantic call from one of the eyewitnesses?  Trying to describe the drama and the trauma of that day?

Try as I might, I could not have imagined it.  No… a phone call doesn’t even come close.

But video?

I always try to watch the whole thing, Lord.  It seems a fitting way to honor Your sacrifice. Watching with horror the horror of every horrible blow.  Is there an echo in here?

Yes, it’s the echo of Your suffering, the horror of Your suffering… made all the more real by these actors and their reenactment.  How can I turn away from the enormity of Your Gift?

Your personal Gift to me?

And so I watch… and I weep… and I wail with the pain of knowing it was my sins that put You through all that and more.

I watch… and I weep… and I wail… knowing every blow was meant for me.

But You knew I couldn’t bear it.  So You did, Lord… and I worship You all the more.

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem… He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”  (Isaiah 53:3,5)

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, Lord.

Anticipating the morning… and the mourning…

… before Sunday can come…

… before Sunday will come…

Abba’s Girl

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