I did not sleep well last night.
I had a bunch of weird nightmares that kept waking me up with a start. And then when I was awake, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I lost something. So, I’d get up and walk around the house checking the doors, checking the boys, and then settle back down to try and sleep.
It happened over and over til I just decided to get up for good.
But why last night? Who knows for sure. All this staying at home had probably made me restless. But when I finally decided to get out of bed and sit in the quiet for a minute before the rest of my family woke up – I realized what today was….
The day we remember the loss of Jesus on the cross. The day we remember His passion and death and the last few moments on the cross before He breathed his last.
So perhaps I was being asked, like the disciples, to stay awake with the Lord.
“The grass never sleeps, or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket had such splendid fringe on its feet, and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body, and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
maybe the lake far away, where once he walked as on a blue pavement,
Lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dead bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that
could not keep that vigil,
how they must have wept,
So utterly human,
Knowing that this too must be a part of the story.”
The story of your Good Friday looks different in quarantine, but it is still here – and the Lord is asking us not to let the sorrow, the grief, and the memory pass us by.
Let us not regard this as just another ordinary day.
Can we stay awake with Him today and remember the precious gift He offered us?⠀
