Friday Won't Last Forever

Good Friday.  Sitting in the dark church.  So much cooler in the evening.

The children kneel on the floor in our aisle.  Turned backward.  The pew their table.

I listen to the scripture.  The words.  Life.  Love.  Oh the love.

The children.  Tongues stuck out.  Concentrating.  Drawing.  The cross.  The Jesus.  The nails.

They have their own silent church in the floor of our row.  Them.  Their paper.  The story swirling in their mind.  The evidence comes alive in their drawings.

It is Friday and God is speaking sweet truth into little minds and big ones. 

I don't think I've ever felt the force of Friday until now.  In this place.

How hopeless it must have all seemed.  How loud the devil must have been laughing.  Obnoxious.  Vile.

The darkness.  Despair.  Was it all a waste?  A joke?  Was any of it true?  Was Jesus who He said He was?

Had they been foolish to risk it all?  Had the plan failed?

Were they forsaken?

The disciples...they fight...strain...struggle to recall what Jesus said.  "What did He say?  What did it all mean?"

I feel those Friday emotions almost every day in Haiti.  The hopelessness.  It hangs here.

It is tempting to doubt.  And I often do.  Have you forsaken this place?  Do you have a plan?  And if you do...is it a good one?  A loving one?  Or are you a fake, God.  A phony?  Or mean?  Is that it?  You let these people suffer.  Where is your mercy?  Where is it?

I fight off Friday thoughts every day I wake up here.

Tonight.  Sweet church.  The story.  My soul...it is starved for this story.

This one Friday.  It was followed by a resurrection Sunday.

Eyes.  They fill with tears.  Hot tears that come from so deep.  So scared.  So doubtful.

My heart yearns for Sunday.  This coming Sunday.  The victory.  All was lost...and yet nothing was lost.  What seemed hopeless only seemed hopeless.  Man was never forsaken...except for one Man.

The wrong was made right.

Evil laughter was silenced.

Dark turned to light.

So much of what did not make sense finally did.

The disciples saw Jesus' words come to fruition.  They understood.  "That is what He meant when He said..."

Sitting in the Good Friday pew my soul cried out for Sunday.  This coming Sunday and the final figurative Sunday.

This weekend's story reminds me of the bigger story.

The Friday I'm living in will not tarry forever.  He is coming to finish it once and for all.

We will finally see.

I yearn to see.

Why the poor are called blessed.

How this setting and these scenes...the one I see every day...the suffering...the sadness...the slavery and poverty...how is this part of one epic love story?  Love?  Grace?  Goodness?  I don't believe it.  I fight to even try.

Yet one day...

When it is finished, the ending read...all the things that were muddy here...foggy and unclear will be strikingly obvious.  We'll understand why Jesus said the man who sold it all to gain heaven was a smart man.  Those crazy things that Jesus said about our lives and the way we live them, the poor, our things, the orphan, the Great Commission...what once was blurry will be visible.  And all of it...every word He ever spoke..every segment of this story will all point to love, grace, and God's glory. The resurrection...something that happened so long ago it heals me and seals my faith for today.  This mystery.  It won't be a mystery forever. 

All the things that seemed to be...the things I am wrong about...that I don't understand...that I can't understand...the one-day Sunday will make sense of it all.

The dark.  This dark.  That long-ago Sunday reminds me...that there is a day that is coming when all that is dark and hidden will be made light and revealed.

This too will end.