Jeremy L. Berg

Good Friday is upon us. Our family tradition is to return from the Good Friday service ending in darkness and silence, and to observe an evening of darkness and shadows at home. Now, we live with three rambunctious kids, not monks in a monastery. So, we don’t just sit in silence in our rooms all night reading the Bible (though I might enjoy that). We light candles everywhere and don’t use electric lights. No video games. No normal TV. In the candle light, we typically watch a Bible movie together. Then we blow out the candles and head to bed. It’s a “set apart” night. Dark. Shadowy. Somber.

But our culture doesn’t readily embrace silence and solemnity and somber reflection. We run the other way from all that, just like we run away from the inescapable reality of death and grief. But we need to practice facing these uncomfortable realities, because they are part of the human experience. And Good Friday is a good day to practice them. With this in mind, here’s a good word from Pastor Mike Glenn to ponder.

How does your family observe Good Friday? Join us for Good Friday service at 6:30 PM at St. Martin’s By the Lake.

Sitting With Our Grief

by Mike Glenn

Whenever you’re with a family in a funeral home waiting for the funeral of their loved one to start, friends will come by and express their condolences. I’ve given up being shocked by what people say, however well-meaning it might be.

Photo by Chris Vanhove on Unsplash

Things like, “You just have to be strong.” Why? They’ve just lost someone they love. Why do they have to be strong right now? Why isn’t it OK for them not to be strong?

Or “You’ll get better.” In some ways yes, they will learn to live with their grief, but in other ways, they won’t ever get over this moment. Sometimes, I get the feeling people say that to encourage people to get over their grief so that their friends themselves can get back to their normal lives.

Yet, we know that we have to resolve our grief. We have to sit with our grief long enough to put meaning to our suffering, to express gratitude for our loved one’s life and then, align our lives with the truths we’re now learning that only death can teach us.

Holy Week is the handful of days the church must sit with its grief. We must sit with the final hours of Jesus’ life – the poignancy of the Last Supper, the horror of His arrest and torture, the finality of His death…and remember.

Freedom can be taken for granted if we don’t take time to remember when we were slaves.

Being found loses its joy if we don’t remember what it was to be lost.

Being alive doesn’t mean much if we don’t remember what it was like when we were dead.

The world wants us to hurry through Holy Week. They don’t want to know the grief. They don’t want to feel the hopelessness. They don’t want to sit for long in the darkness.

But it’s the sitting in the darkness that makes the light easier to see. It’s not being able to see anything that makes seeing everything so transformative.

Don’t hurry through the darkness. Sit with Jesus and His grief in Gethsemane. Sit with Him in the agony of His death. Sit with Him in the haunting silence of His burial.

Sit here. Sit with your grief in the darkness of Calvary.

We’ll need all our strength for what comes next.