Good Friday and Easter Sunday musings

You know what? Life isn't easy. Some people may have more money or opportunities than others, but there are a few common elements to the human experience. Almost everyone will experience tragedy. Just about everyone will experience pain and hurt. Everyone will experience fear, and everyone will experience death.

The trials of life don't discriminate. The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked. You can be Christian, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, and this still holds true. Some may have easier lives than others, but in the end there's a commonality in much of human existence that, when considered on its own, can be profoundly despairing.

It's in the midst of this that the message of Jesus Christ shines through - hope. Scripture records that Jesus experienced every temptation and trial that life can throw at us, and remained pure:

He experienced the chilling fear of the difficult path he knew he would have to take, when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He experienced the blazing pain of being lashed to the point where the skin of his back was effectively gone, exposing the raw flesh to the splintered wood of the cross.

He experienced the searing grief of feeling the presence of God the Father leave him, turning away in order that the final work of God's judgment on sin could be completed.

He experienced death. God took on human form in order to die on behalf of all humanity.

And yet... there is hope. When Jesus left the tomb, he conquered death - it had lost its sting. No longer did humanity have to remain in bondage to the despair and aimlessness of a life of depressing inevitabilities. Now, there is an eternal hope that we have the choice of turning to. Scripture says that "it is in this hope that we are saved." In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, one of my favorites, hope is described in this way: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."

Fullness of life doesn't mean that you're spared from life's hurts and tragedies. The follower of Jesus Christ will experience these trials, just like anybody else, and perhaps even to a greater degree. But the privilege that we have is knowing that in the midst of pain and grief, there is an eternal hope - that the price for sin has already been paid, and that something better is coming.

At our Good Friday service last Friday, we sang the incomparable hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul" by Horatio G. Spafford. Something of a 19th-century version of the Biblical character Job, Spafford wrote the hymn after two major traumas in his life. The first was the Chicago fire of 1871 that reduced him from a wealthy businessman to a pauper. The second occurred shortly afterward, when the ship that the rest of his family was travelling on, collided with another ship, killing all four of his daughters. His wife survived and sent him a telegram saying, "Saved alone". In response to this, he wrote this hymn.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.