Darkness covered the land. 

 

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He cried out.  

 

“It is finished!”  He bowed His Head.  He breathed His last.  And then He yielded up His Spirit.  

 

The earth shook.  The rocks split.  The graves opened. 

 

“Truly this Man was the Son of God!” said the centurion standing opposite Him.

 

I stood at a distance and watched.

 

The crowd, who came to see Him crucified, beat their breasts when they saw all this, then went away.

 

But we stood at a distance and watched.  

 

For we knew Him.

 

We knew the sound of His laughter.  We had seen His Face
when He wept.  We had seen His eyes full of sorrow and joy, hope, love.  

 

We had known His Love.  

 

We could tell when He was tired, when He was troubled,
when He was pleased.  

 

He had shared His Heart with us.  

 

He had asked that we would pray with Him.  He had asked
us to stay with Him and pray.  

 

Now He was gone.  And we were alone.  

 

Crucified. 

 

They pierced His Side.  And the Blood and water flowed. 
I testify it is true.

 

And His Face, it was always full of compassion and mercy
when He saw me, and it was beaten and bloody now, and
thorns were pressed into His brow. 

 

His Hands that healed the sick and mended the broken were pierced with nails.  His Feet, too—that had tread this
earth for us, with us.

 

How we loved Him!

 

Crucified.

 

Gone.

 

Why?

+  +  +

Imagine how the disciples felt when they discovered that Jesus had been truly raised to life.  Their Friend, their Savior, their Beloved is alive!

 

A famous atheist once stated his belief that God is dead.  “Don’t believe me?” he asked.  “Go to church.”

 

Why do we gather on Sundays?  To celebrate? Do we celebrate?  Do we joy as we would were we to really see the Cross, His Sacrifice for us, to know our sins forever gone, to really know that our Savior is risen—that He is alive?

 

You know it in your head.  But let it penetrate your heart—pierce it, break it, fill it with unbounding joy.

 

We are free.

 

We have been forgiven.

 

He died for us.

 

And He lives!

 

Did you know this Sunday that He is alive?

 

Would the world have known by your countenance that you knew?

 

Could you hide it?

 

The early disciples couldn’t. 

May we know this day, and every day—truly know throughout every fiber and to the depths of our beings—that He is alive, that He lives, what He has done, and all that this means, as though we were there, that we would be known as His disciples, and so very incapable of hiding it.

 

He lives!

 

Dear friends, I long, I ache that we could—that we would—celebrate this together as His Bride.

 

Someday?

Copyrighted material, used with permission.