Friday, March 29, 2013 | By: Jake

We Paused

For Holy Thursday, after some prayer, worship, and foot-washing with close friends, I attended Tenebrae at the Basilica at Notre Dame, an amazing service that I also attended the previous year. However, last year, I attended and focused a lot more on the "show" aspect of it...being amazed by the choir, the loud organ, the lights, etc.

But this year, it was a little bit different. I tried actually paying attention to what was being sung, to what I was saying, attempting to realize what the cross meant...not what the cross did for us, or what it meant for us, but what the cross, itself, meant. And it meant a lot of suffering, feelings of abandonment, loneliness...it showed the power of God...

As we sang together those emoting words from the 22nd Psalm...



My God...My God...Why have You forsaken me?

It's a powerful quote that we probably say a lot more than we know...God, how could You let this happen?...God, I thought you were a loving God!....and maybe even once in a while, we add some wonderful four-letter words in there for Him. It perfectly sums up this idea of wrestling with God, wrestling the Creator, fighting over past events, fighting over current circumstances, fighting over the call of the future...

My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me?

And the Kýrie, Eléison...

My God, My Lord, My Christ, My Savior....Have Mercy...sung with such passion, but "passion" doesn't even begin to describe it...more like desperation, fear, despair....as we realize Christ as our only hope.

And as the Light processed out of the Basilica, we sat amidst the earthquake, amidst the suffering...and instead of moving on, we waited.

We paused.

And this afternoon, at Granger Community Church, we heard Jason Miller mention the same thing...not to quickly rush past Good Friday to Resurrection Sunday, but to pause, to take in this moment. We have a great benefit in knowing what happens on Easter...a benefit that the first Christians did not have.

Because they thought they had lost their Savior, they thought He would not return, they thought they were forsaken just as He was...

And we took the bread and wine, we took in the moment, and together, we shared in the meal, remembering the cross...

And we united our voices in that remembrance, and for the first time, I could hear the church's voices over the quiet acoustic worship...an alive church, a church desperate to share the good news...but not until Sunday...

Because until then, we wait.


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