Good Friday

Here we are again.  Good Friday.  Holy Week.

Dyeing eggs and digging out the plastic grass from the basement.

Tonight we have the tenabrae service at church.  The music travels through the seven last words of Christ.  The service ends in darkness.

Calvin has the black scarf on the cross on his bedroom door.

I've said this before, but you must cope with me and read it again, since you are here on my blog--

The seven last words of Christ will forever take me back to Palm Sunday of 2009, with my dad directing the Tipton Community Choir's performance of the Seven Last Words Cantata.  I see him in his rented tux, and I here the tone of his voice singing:

God My Father

God My Father

Why

Hast Thou

Forsaken 

Me

Of course we found out Maundy Thursday that he had pancreatic cancer and we lost him five months later.

The comfort here is only and completely that we have a God who suffered right there with us.  When you think of the worst thing that could happen to anybody--pain, humiliation, torture--Jesus took it all.  His last words show that he had the same human feelings that we all have at some time in our lives.  Abandonment. The need to forgive those closest to us.  Physical exhaustion.  And finally relinquishment.

I come to that moment of complete clarity where the suffering here on Earth-from my dad to whole ethnic groups--must be such a speck on our histories. A speck on eternity. In the same way that childbirth is a speck on the lives of our children.  It seems painful during those moments, hours, or days that you are going through it, but you look back and barely remember how bad it was.  The pain is somehow erased with the joy of the new life and raising the child.

The best words from the cross?  "Today you will be with me in paradise."

I believe that.  It couldn't be more clear.  Even as I shed a few tears for my dad this morning, I'm ending up with a smile in my heart--Daddy is in paradise--but so am I here today--the promise is for everyone.

Happy Easter!