On A Hill Not So Far Away -Good Friday Thoughts

We have almost come to an end these long tedious forty days. They started in a wilderness where God’s son fought and wrestled and hungered and came out as tired as one could be. And in our forty days with cathedrals burning and children in McAllen and El Paso crying far into the night and rage after rage in Washington we come to this hill they sang was far away. But so far away I think. For that ragged timbered cross was set down in a hole of red mud and clay and dirt and sand—maybe rocks too—making sure it would hold. But set down in our world—this world—this God-so-loved-world still towering over wrecks of time. His and ours.

I keep these crosses you see ion this picture above close at hand.They hang on tiny nails above my computer and my books and my chair and my house and my world. If you look closely at the photograph to the left of the crosses you will see part of a poem that dear Jerry wrote when I turned sixty. He died two weeks ago in Hong Kong—but like that poem on my wall—whatever he dreamed and thought and preached and wrote—Jerry, it lives on in our hearts. And somehow those crucifixes and that poem are linked just was everything in my life and yours and there world over is linked. 

I spend as lot of time in this room. I spend many hours at my computer. Busy, busy about many things. Paying bills. Writing a note to the man who lost of wife of 67 years last week. Hammering out sermons as I wonder who will be there and if this really helps. Writing sometimes for the local paper. And scratching my head and wondering what I want to pull out of my heart and send it out into web land. 

But I must confess that most days I don’t look at those crosses on my desk. Or the poem written twenty years ago. I worry about the world and this country. I worry about evangelicals who seem to have stalled poison hook line and sinker. After 1946 the churches in Germany were not filled. Empty, empty pews everywhere. And I wonder if our churches in this world of lies and deceptions and power gone wrong—I wonder who will be in our pews when it all settles down. I find myself depressed at friends I lose and age that whittles away my body and my fledgling faith and a tattered world.

And this day I put all that aside for just a while. And I look up and remember. Those outstretched arms on that splintered cross are for me and you and our time—as in every other time. Some things do not change—not many. But on that hill not so far away I come back and am humbled—at least for the moment—knowing that deep in that clay and red mud and dirt and sand it goes all the way down the centuries until it stops right here. My street and yours. Those outstretched hands really do hold the whole wide world. And me, too and mine and yours as well. How could I ever forget this. But I do.

So I thank God for Good Friday. For despite the blood and gore and the pain of it all—it matters more than anything I know.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com