Good Friday: Crossing through the dark

The morning is cloudy on our hill. The signs of winter remain: trees damaged in the winter storms, dead leaves on the ground. Life struggles to be born anew. Death does want to let go.

Today is Good Friday, which might be better called Grim Friday. Soon we gather again in churches to stand vigil at the Cross, and tell the story once again of a murder long ago in Jerusalem. The goodness will be hard to see. If faith falters in the dark, that is part of the forsakenness of living.

My friend, Stephen Charleston, wrote this on his Facebook this morning, and I leave it with you:

“There are few people of faith who have not crossed through that dark day when they wondered if the God on whom they depended had gone away, deserted them, or even died. In the pain of our own mortality, when we face the loss of those for whom we care, when illness strikes us down or injustice overwhelms us, it is not hard to understand why we have felt this way. To receive the light, we must accept the darkness. We must go into the tomb of all that haunts us, even the loss of faith itself, to discover a truth older than death.”