How God's Love Changes Us: Part 3 - Overcoming Grief, Achieving ReconciliationSample

To taste glory in the midst of heartache, we must follow our Savior’s example by facing the brutality of the Crucifixion. The beginning step of arriving at grief’s doorstep is Good Friday. This is the darkest of days, when God’s face turns from his Son’s and Jesus cries out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, niv).

Good Friday invites us into the anguish and devastation of our own crosses, when we allow ourselves to know the texture of our own agony rather than try to escape it. Then comes Holy Saturday, when we must taste the obscenity of death and be willing to sit with the unknown darkness alongside the sense of futility and powerlessness. We must continue to mourn and feel the pain that comes with losing someone or something precious.

Finally— yes, finally— comes Resurrection Sunday. We savor the wonders of our rebirth. We are humbled, exhausted, and relieved as we celebrate the wonder of a holy miracle. When we are in Friday, we can’t see Saturday, and when we are in the gloom of Saturday, we don’t know if Sunday will ever come. Yet when it does, we are full of goodness and joy and love, even as we never lose sight of the fallen world in which we live.

We are called to live in the tension of all three days, moving in and out of each and living honestly and courageously in the tension of both grief and joy.