On this Good Friday we recognize that many of our readers are going to be busy planning, partaking, or conducting services throughout the weekend. Pastors, worship leaders, children’s ministers and teachers, acolytes, elders, deacons and door greeters! Oh my! So many people with so much to do as we plan for the death of the Lamb and the resurrection of the King. Rather than try to add more reading onto your already busy pile, we’ve put together a few quick things that we think might help.
First, we want to remind all of our readers that the deadline for our ACTS Teams trips are coming VERY soon. The deadline for our USA Southwest trip to Gamerco, New Mexico is on April 1st. That’s three days away! A bit further out (but approaching rapidly) is the deadline for the ACTS Teams trip to Kenya. That application deadline is June 3rd. Please consider applying, and tell your friends. Both are truly excellent (and potentially life changing) mission opportunities. You can find more info here.
Second, a Sonnet from priest and poet Malcom Guite, and his book Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year. We found it deeply moving and captured some of our response to reading about Jesus’s journey into Jerusalem.
“A Sonnet for Palm Sunday”
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem
The Seething holy city of my heart,
The Savior comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh the crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home
Finally, if you’re itching for a longer blog post, our Good Friday post last year is still pretty relevant. Last year we spoke about the contrast between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and the physical and emotional journey that everyone at the cross was going through. You can read a snippet, and find the link, below.
We call this day “Good Friday” because while the vision of the cross is a bloody, ruthless, torturous affair that broke the faith of many of Christ’s followers, it is also the day of Christ’s unparalleled achievement, and the greatest victory over sin and death. For us, it is a very good day. For us, it is more beautiful than it is bloody. It incites more wonder than it does horror, and Christ’s resurrection is perceived more triumphantly because we bear witness to Good Friday’s inherent darkness.
CGGC eNews—Vol. 18, No. 13
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