I watched him carry a cross up the side walk and I watched in my rear view mirror as he walked the crest of the hill and disappeared down the other side.
Good Friday does strange things to people.
Him with the brown jacket and jeans trying to feel the weight of the cross Jesus carried.
I kept thinking of him trying to enter Jesus' suffering.
I think of the young wife entering her husbands suffering, the mystery of it all and her commitment to not only stay but love through sickness and health till death do them part. She enters the suffering of it not knowing if death will come sooner to their young marriage than they thought.
And the girl who tries desperately to avoid entering the suffering of her past knowing no way but to cut her smooth olive skin to escape it. And fearing to hope because of the sickness and suffering deferred hope has brought to her heart.
The boy who has grown in knowledge of the one who suffered but cannot figure how that relieves his sufferings. So He pursues religion and relationships and suffers still. Suffers still more from the emptiness of those pursuits.
And the wife and daughters who celebrate this Easter with the man who loved other woman and now tries to suffer to amend their suffering. And silence marks the event that exploded in their house a year ago, but the suffering in their hearts, it will not be silent. And anger seems to only voice that speaks in that house.
The girl, the one who doesn't believe in good or evil or God because of the funeral 3 years ago that was for her daddy who took his own life. His life that consisted of church every week and God talks through out the week. Her suffering is no where near expiring.
And the babies in India who are sold by the parents. Their suffering and the horror their heart know will never dissipate this side of heaven.
And this Good Friday is a suffering Friday.
And I think of the man carrying that wooden cross on the side walk as I drove past.
What suffering does his heart know?
And my heart cries for an explanation.
My heart demands a change a resolution that is tangible and physical and full of relief.
And I know it is not right and I know it does not match the joyful cries that others are raising this Friday.
But still it is there and so is the question I have exhausted in every arena and it breaks the silence of my car.
Why?
Why the hurt and the evil and the suffering?
Why the broken hearts and the broken bodies?
And your position Lord it feels so far off and distant.
And he gives no audible answer.
And I sit at the red light.
Why the hurt?
And I am reminded and my heart stills.
My heart is reminded of his position on that Good Friday.
Wasn't He hurt?
And hadn't he tasted evil that night, that Good Friday? The taste of bread and wine mixed with the knowledge, the heaviness of what was about to be consumed.
Wasn't he about to consume the suffering so we could be consummated.
And hadn't he suffered for our salvation.
And his broken body could it even compare to the wrath that broke on his shoulders that night.
And it strikes me... again.
Our brokenness is healed by his holiness and the holes that pierced his body to pierce the sin that put holes in us.
And our aloneness it needs to meet with his presence.
And our evil his atonement.
And I am reminded of Tullian's quote
"In our suffering we do not need an answer we need his presence."
And I agree with Ann
"We do not need an explanation we need an experience." And I would add an experience from and experienced one.
The man I passed, the one trying to enter and feel the weight of the cross he will try.
But this Jesus, he was tried so that our trying could end and in our trials his trial reminds us that there is something weightier than this present moment waiting for us.
His suffering was cause by our sinning But the cross he carried that Good Friday it was his choosing, his entering and it is this entering that gives hope to our living. Lives under crosses of abandon and adultery and broken promises and broken marriages and debt and divorce and cancer and miscarriages and missed chances.
It is his suffering that comforts the inconsolable and breeds hope where hurt has reigned.
It is his bearing of the wrath that makes it possible to choose the yoke that he has offered to share. A light yoke, a teaching yoke.
It is because he swallowed death that now we can taste and digest all of life, not just the tasty, palatable morsels. But the bitter, tasteless moments too.
It is because of him that we do not have to exhaust explications but can exist in his presence confidently and comforted because of and by his suffering in our suffering.
I applaud the man trying to enter the suffering on the side walk this morning but looking around there is little trying to enter.
If anyone has entered this world they, I, we have entered suffering.
But it is the entrance that was unexpected in a little barn in Bethlehem and the exit that was unexplainable on a wooden, shameful cross that allows us to experience the presence of the suffering and identifying Jesus in our present and unexplained (or explained) suffering.
We suffer with hope and patience and yes even contentment because he has entered our eroding and suffered and carried our sinning and shame and shaming and stays present in our pressures.
And the world watches our suffering from their suffering and maybe that is what will draw them to the Well of Life like we draw water from the life that was made well after his own suffering.
