Good Friday

“For innumerable troubles have crowded upon me;

my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see; *

they are more in number than the hairs of my head,

and my heart fails me.

Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; *

O LORD, make haste to help me.”

Psalm 40, Good Friday, Morning Prayer, the Daily Office Book, Year One

Honestly when I look back on the 53 years of my life, I can’t begin to count the transgressions and the painful wounds I caused myself and others. Still this God I know is the one who always has the mercy of love to give to me, or to anyone willing to come to honest terms with themselves. Today is the judgment day, the terrible great day of reckoning, where you, I and all who came before us and follow us, are condemned  as worthy of love, God’s love and the love of each other. We are judged and our hearts are changed, our minds are changed, we forevermore are changed. Today shows us the way to The Life, Jesus shows us without vulnerability there is no love and without love there is no life. Remember the end of Advent and we sang “Emanuel!” as this Jesus was birthed, “God is with us!” From Epiphany, through Lent, and now on the cross in his dying, Jesus, God is with us, and in his compassionate prayers for us, he remains with us. Love is living with us. And we look to Easter when again Jesus, God is with us, remains with us beyond death. At Pentecost, Jesus will give his spirit to us to keep always. Then back with us in Advent, again reminding us we are expectant of God within us. Always God is with us. There it is laid out in our calendar year, ever present reminders that God is with us. In different forms represented by different seasons, yet all seasons saying the same, God is with us.

Today, Good Friday, reminds us that there are times when it seems God is gone from us, when our pain is so overwhelming, we have no sense of anything else. Yet, God does remain and like Mary, in the midst of our suffering, we can’t recognize the Master before us even as he calls our name, “Mary!” We again stare blankly at the presence who will not hasten to leave us, but instead he says our name, “Mary!” Until again we see.