Good Friday

We began Lent by lighting four candles on our cross.

In the same way we add Light during Advent, we remove a light each week during Lent.

Throughout Lent we have anticipated Good Friday.

When I came home from the hospital tonight, it was time to blow out the final candle of our Lenten cross.

We remember the extinguishing of the Light of Christ as we blow out the final candle on Good Friday.

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

II Cor 4: 6-11

Never before have I come to a Good Friday so aware of my need to be delivered from death.

Never have I so yearned to see the life of Jesus revealed in a mortal body.

Do you read that passage from II Corinthians the way that I do? We carry the death of Christ in our bodies so that his life may be revealed.

Yes. Death is at work.

Yes. Life is at work.

In Christ, life always comes from death. I have no earthly reason to expect to see the glory of God in John's body.

Jesus trampled down death by death.

I cannot know how God will manifest his glory through John, I only know that both life and death are at work and that Easter is coming.

In the eyes of the Oncologist, there is no hope for life. John is not responding to the treatment they are giving. The fluid in the lungs is not decreasing. There is pneumonia and, as the doc said, "funky ribs" from bone disease. John is not able to communicate most of the time. It is heartbreaking to see a quick-witted man unable to find a single word to express a simple need. If there is not a miraculous change in John's breathing, mobility and coherence, the treatment he is receiving will not continue past Monday. We will bring John home and begin hospice care.

Take heart, we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. And as my friend Margaret prayed today, "We are not ready to give John over to death. While there is breath we will pray for healing."

I hope you will not find it inappropriate if I share a small bright spot in my day. A smile slipped across my face as the thought occurred to me, "Its just like John to have a brush with death on Good Friday. Only John would wait until it was liturgically correct to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death."

Join me in praying for a miraculous Easter resurrection!