A look in the rearview mirror

For Lent this year I decided to read through the Gospels for the 46 days and I think I will probably adopt this tradition every year. But this was the first year that I felt like Lent meant something, that I was looking towards Jesus and thinking about him and his life and his death and life again. I was really effected by reading the Gospels, they seemed different and new and Jesus seemed like this real and amazing person in a way I hadn't seen him before. Our Thursday service at school had moments where I felt really moved, something was happening inside me.

And then I got to Good Friday and Easter weekend and.....nothing. nothing happened inside of me. I thought it was going to be this amazing experience where I wept over his death and felt more alive than ever before thinking about his resurrection but the whole weekend it didn't even feel like Easter. I didn't understand how this could be. How could I have just read through all this stuff and then feel nothing on the day where we specifically remember Christ's death. I felt hard inside. And let down by God sort of.

Sunday morning just felt like a regular old service and I was a bit nervous because I was singing a song at the end of the service and so mostly I was distracted by that but again was feeling rather uninvolved in this process, in this celebration. Frustrated that I could feel so distant from something that I had tried to prepare myself for 40 days.

But then Jenz got up at communion and spoke about how the Cross is God's way of saying "There, there it's going to be okay". He spoke of how normally that's a patronizing thing to say to someone but that in God's case it's the real truth. That when we look at the cross we can think, "It's all going to be okay. I've made it okay. All this suffering and frustration is eventually going to be okay because you will be with me. Here is your hope."

Over the weekend I talked more than usual with people about the big world issues, about the problem in Uganda, about world poverty and suffering and AIDS etc. I'm glad I was reminded of the hope. I can so easily forget about the truth I know when life or problems feel overwhelming. But God is not distant or removed from the suffering, he is in it, he experienced it by sacrificing his own son, by being torn apart. And he has given us the hope of knowing it's going to be okay, he has made a way for that to be possible.