The Hard Love (A Five Minute Post, for Good Friday)

Lisa-Jo invites me to write about the hard love with her in just five minutes - and today, on Good Friday, I hope I can be quiet with you.

The hard love is the moment after the loud cry. He gives up his spirit and the world hands in suspension, wondering if another gasping breath can be breathed on that cross, wondering if another shuddering cry will  slip out of his collapsing lungs. And the hard love comes in wrenching, gut twisting sobs from the foot of the cross where Mary and the women weep. Because they've been watching the dying and they know, they know that he is gone.

And the Resurrection is never harder to believe than the moment of this Love that shivers on the Cross emptied and dying. When the thief whispers, Remember me, O Lord, in your Kingdom it feels like a forgotten, desperate cry because how will Jesus who is dying remember anything? What is memory after death? But I sit today in the muddle and mess of my own heart, and I am crying out to Jesus - Remember me, O Lord, in your Kingdom.

Because the hard love holds me tight in his outstretched arms, embraces my scarred and knotted up self, the self who can't manage to breathe calm or peace, the self who is frantic to finish the week, the self who asks questions she can't answer (can anyone answer the question how do I live hoping in Him?). 

His love today stretches him out and pins him to the rough wood and it crucifies. And then the last breath and we begin to weep. Because it is that love that now holds me.

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your
family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be
betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer
death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Love,

Hilary