Day Thirty-Nine

Day Thirty–Nine // April 2 // The Willing Heart of Christ (Good Friday)

“…nevertheless…” – Jesus –

It had all led to this moment.

The prayers. The miracles. The miles.

They led to this one, cataclysmic moment as all the powers of hell and earth waged war against Perfection.

And it started in a place where many things start in the Bible: it started in a garden. It started in a garden where He might have played as a young boy, under the same gnarled branches from which He may have swung. It started with honest and bloody tears as He gave Himself over to the perfect plan of God – willingly, willfully choosing to surrender: “Nevertheless.”

With that one word, all the angels found their footing. With that one word, the demons howled and

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sang and hissed. With that one word, the moment – the culmination of the ages – began as that whispered sigh of surrender turned to mob’s loud shouts of “Crucify!”

The battlelines had been drawn. Heaven and hell had staked their claim. Across the beaten body of our Christ, the war would be fought. The cruelty. The mocking. The unflinching spite. His face grew bruised from the punches. His back ran crimson from the whip. But, still, He pressed on – carrying His cross towards Golgotha. … and carrying more.

He was carrying you.

And He was carrying me.

His hate-ravaged, love-compelled body carried all that we couldn’t carry for ourselves. All our brokenness and sin and shame. All our hurts and sorrow and grief. He was carrying our every burden and regret. He carried it all: our addictions, our burdens, our worries, our fears, our grudges, our ego, our doubts, and our tears. He carried all this for us.

On holy arms the darkness could neither weaken nor defy, Christ carried the weight of the world as sacred flesh was pierced by Rome’s cruel spikes. His body, His brow, His feet, His side: this pulpit of the cross became His final sermon. And after agonizing hours suspended between two thieves, our Savior’s life was taken. No, not taken; not stolen as was the thieves’ practice.

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It was given.

And it was finished.

The earth quaked. The veil tore. And, in celestial mourning, the sun refused to shine. For earth’s dim light had no right to gleam when holy Light had been snuffed.

It was over. His body was perfectly, tragically, beautifully wounded.

But His life and His death mean little if He died only for the world. We must know – we must believe – that He did all of this for us; that He died for us, that in His body, He suffered so that we might live. Live – not just survive. All of this – as gruesome and ugly as it be – He did that we might know and savor and trust the beauty of His love for us.