Saturday, April 7, 2007

Dearest God,

Saturday of Holy Week. Although I will search for Easter eggs with grandchildren, I will carry within me the darkness of the first Saturday after Good Friday. For all practical purposes Jesus was dead in a tomb. All hope was gone. The dreams of a new world, of love, relationship, purpose, joy, light, and peace had dissipated. A day of dread. And fear. Someone may come and find me, a friend of Jesus. I'll get the same.

It was difficult conducting a wedding on Good Friday. How do you celebrate, party on Good Friday? I felt like I was in a vice, being squeezed from both sides.

I entered silence at 6:30 and remained until 7:00 p.m. Kneeling in my pew I closed my eyes, envisioning God's act of love. Then I opened them, sat in the pew looking up at the cross, front and center in the sanctuary. This cross is the symbol, the God-awful symbol of Christ. I still can't completely imagine how one man would die for so many who simply don't care. Do I, really? Does it make a difference for me? Or will I make a mad dash scramble to the cross when I make my own cross over?

As I left the sanctuary, I drew my mind back or did you do it? Back to the cross. I sang all the cross songs I knew, hummed them when I couldn't remember the words. My spirit was at the foot of the cross, remaining with Jesus. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.

A wedding? I gulped in a breath of spirit air, then moved with my robe, stole, bible and book of worship. As I entered the ballroom, I realized that the spirit of joy that one has comes from God. Are we born with it? Do we learn joy? Or does it truly come from a deeper source?

When I walked into the room of the bride, I remembered her mother who I buried many years ago. I recalled the bride's words of faith then and since. She seeks for God, longs to be close, wants to live the life of faith. I know where her joy comes from. I could see it in her eyes. We serve the same God. The wedding is a celebration of God's activity in the world. The truest joy, the purest kind erupts from God, like so much molten lava from an erupting volcano. It flows and flows and you think it will never stop. It doesn't.

I couldn't stop smiling. I had entered the home of God in the midst of the people. The angst I had been carrying was gone. I could only give thanks to the God of love.

A Good Friday love,
that's what I called it.
A man and woman
looking,
looking,
looking
for a Good Friday love.
A love that
offers Jesus to another.
I saw it in their eyes
as they stood before me.
They had found it in each other.
Off to the side
standing close by,
I saw him
quiet, smiling,
wearing an old brown robe
and dusty sandals,
an old beat-up cross at his side.
Not dead in a tomb
but alive at a wedding,
a Good Friday love.

I shall forever love you, Andrea