Over my lifetime, Good Friday has come to mean to me the piercing, bleeding, sobbing realization that we are (I am) incapable of (and even, at times, flaunting of) the life of peace, beauty, love, and harmony that we (I) say we (I) want in better and higher moments. We are broken and cannot put the pieces back together again. We have given in to hopelessness and accepted the status quo.

Over my lifetime, Good Friday has come to mean to me the promise of rich, red rivulets oozing from a thorn pierced scalp, snaking their way over pain creased forehead, filling a brow to overflowing, before spattering on the freshly disturbed sand below, each droplet asking me {us} to let the truth sink in that this is love: unstoppable, freely given, all-powerful love …. Given and shed for you (me). 

Over my lifetime, I have begun to come to the understanding that Good Friday is an invitation to love and forgiveness, for me, and for you, for every friend and foe, for those who drove the spikes home on that dark day, and for all those whose broken, hurtful lives are laid out before us in the news each day.

Thank you, lovely, bleeding, dripping, pouring, Jesus. May your unyielding, freeing love help us to begin to pick up the pieces, to live with ourselves, to live better and more hopefully with those we love, and to begin helping to put some of the broken pieces of this fractured world together again.