Day 45: Supplication [Good Friday]

Friday, April 14, 2017

Scripture

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for MY sake will find it.”

— Matthew 16:25 (NET)

Reflection

We would rather that the violence that haunts this day of our calendar year — the death of GOD at the hands of humankind — was further off from our own worlds: a distant place and time, a happening well removed from us. We would rather that today did not mention us, that we were safe from the loud bellows of crucified LOVE, that its beckoning did not call us by name. We would rather the cross was less double-edged: that this forgiveness was not also admission of our guilt, that this grace was not also confession of our helplessness, that this love was not also lament of our lovelessness. So we linger hesitantly on the fringe, on the edge of that dark moment, afraid and unsure whether to really enter into this admission, confession, and lament.

Participation

Come to HIM. Exactly as you are, come to HIM. Come with reckless abandon. Come — with all your secrets, your pain, your sin, your shame, your darkness — come to HIM, and throw yourself headlong into the open, outstretched arms of the crucified MESSIAH.

Excerpt

“Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for CHRIST and you will find HIM, and with HIM everything else thrown in.”

— C. S. Lewis

For Families:

1. YOUNGER KIDS READ: “A Dark Night in the Garden” on page 294 and “The Sun Stops Shining” on page 302 in The JESUS Storybook Bible / OLDER KIDS READ: Luke 22 and 23
2. TALK: Give your children a chance to talk about what they were feeling as you read. Perhaps they will share feelings of sadness- why did they hurt JESUS like that?; or anger- they had no right to do that to JESUS because HE didn’t do anything. Talk them through what they are feeling and remind them that Friday is sad but Sunday is coming!