Good Friday Dark Friday

Good Friday for some, for others Earth day.... Or maybe both. While I may be spending most of my day reading Eating Animals and contemplating all my ethical food choices to a greater world view (and losing my appetite), I also hold Good Friday somewhere in there too.

It's a beautiful sunny NW day which rarely comes along - it doesn't FEEL dark... But reading this passage reminds me of what this day represents. Not just the ugly death and separation and betrayal; but it also reminds me that even in dark, inky times- beauty is hidden behind the veil. Waiting for it to be torn, waiting to be discovered. Waiting to be basked in.

I am a black sheep dressed in all the beauty of the universe.
I may not bike to work (I don't believe I possess the muscles),
I may not compost (yet),
and I'm certainly not going to any religious services this week (I work anyway)....

But Today, I celebrate the beauty of earth and the beauty of grace on earth. Today (like every other day I seem to so miserably fail at), I pledge to do my best to unveil that beauty in myself, in others, and in the world. To honor that grace given to each of us

Isaiah 53

Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.

There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.

But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.

We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.

Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.

Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.

...Because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on is own shoulders the sins of many, he took up the cause of the black sheep.

Thou art Love

If I forget,
Yet God remembers! If these hands of mine
Cease from their clinging, yet the hands divine
Hold me so firmly that I cannot fall;
And if sometimes I am too tired to call
For Him to help me, then He reads the prayer
Unspoken in my heart, and lifts my care.

I dare not fear, since certainly I know
That I am in God’s keeping, shielded so
From all that else would harm, and in the hour
Of stern temptation strengthened by His power;
I tread no path in life to Him unknown;
I lift no burden, bear no pain, alone:
My soul a calm, sure hiding-place has found:
The everlasting arms my life surround.

God, Thou art love! I build my faith on that.
I know Thee who has kept my path, and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy;
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.
—Robert Browning