If you’re like me and grew up in a Christian home then this weekend comes with a certain sentiment. Easter baskets filled with candy and potentially a very large bunny stuffed animal, you’ve sang “he is risen’ on Sunday with your big pink bow, and took family portraits that always ended up with someone crying from the sugar crash that was occurring. We knew it was important, we knew it mattered, and we knew we were supposed to look our best and try not to get chocolate on our white dress (why they combined a holiday of chocolate eating with the tradition of wearing white is beyond me). It was sweet, it was a family weekend, but it never shook my world.
Its Good Friday today and as I read the verse I’ve read 100 times I pray it hits me in a new way. I pray I don’t roll by this weekend with a sense of familiarity like I have 100x before. I pray I don’t get caught up in the baking, egg hunting, and family pictures, only to forget that the death sentence that had been placed on my life was lifted. The debt I could never erase by my own striving was wiped clean.
“He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins, he was beaten so we could be made whole” (Isiah 53:5)
And yet I forget to remember. I forget to be awed because I’ve heard it before. I’ve been breathless and weepy and asked, how could you do this for me? But somehow the farther I get removed from that moment the farther I get from remembering how much I need today. It will never stop being true, I will never need less of Jesus than he gave on the cross. So why should I be moved any less? I don’t become less of a sinner any more than I become less of a human.
So let’s live in our need, live in our dependence for today and that cross and the sinless man that died on our behalf. I pray the story never becomes old or boring. I pray our memories of Good Friday won’t be like a child’s book but like a living breathing man being beaten, wounded, and killed on our behalf. We search for ways to dumb it down for our kids so they can take part in the story but what I want to tell my daughter is the utter suffering that happened on that cross represents a love like no other. I want her to get the pain because our story isn’t nearly as meaningful unless cost was really that high. Let’s not forget the gravity of today, the pain of today, and the love laced in it all. Let’s not breeze by the weekend and forget that under the candy, bunnies, and dresses is the greatest love story we will ever know.
