Good friday

It was the deepest pain I’d ever known.
The darkness washing over me
in suffocating waves. 
How a good God could allow this loss 
was beyond me. 

Or was God responsible? 

Does God take from us?

And if so, what kind of God is that?

Questions battled each other in my mind.
Each one more horrifying than the one before. 
But none of them prompted an adequate answer
to justify this pain. 
To justify God.

And so I wept. 

Until I was too exhausted for questions.
Too exhausted to seek answers.

And then I slept. 

Mercifully dream-free. 

Because the morning had its own horrors,
waking up knowing my world 
was absent one person. 
That pain cracking me open all over again.

How does the world continue to spin 
when my world had stopped? 

How can people laugh 
when I had forgotten how?

Color siphoned from the world
until all I knew was gray.
Shadows swallowing any light 
that dared peek between my blackout curtains.

And I was content to be alone,
raging my war with God,
hurling tear-stained accusations. 

Because it was all that kept me
from questioning God’s very existence. 

And it was in this moment 
I recognized the deep faith of a question 
that has haunted theologians for millennia. 

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The last words that left Jesus’ lips in two Gospels.

A cry of despair
Of grief.

But not a lack of faith.

Jesus did not proclaim “God is dead” 
as Nietzsche would in the face of despair.

From the depths of infinite horrors 
and loneliness 
and betrayal, 
Jesus continued to acknowledge God’s existence and presence, 
but also gave voice to his own questioning.

Like Job before Him.

Like David in his lament psalms.

Because there is deep faith 
embedded in our cries to God.

In our questions. 

Even in our raging accusations.

As long as we’re talking to God, 
We still have faith. 

And we join in that great cloud of witnesses
who acknowledged that life is not always fair 
or easy
or pain-free.

But that God is present in it 
and with us.

Because God knew intimately 
every pain we will ever experience.

He is the only God
who put on flesh 
to walk among us 
to experience poverty
to be betrayed by friends
to be tortured 
and ridiculed
and suffer a painful death.

And it is this union with God
That we remember today.

Our suffering God.
Who chooses to be with us in our own.