Good Friday Reflections

Tonight, squished between my eldest two children, I read bedtime stories on my big bed—a move we made because my pregnant body filled up the whole toddler bed leaving no room for my story-ready children. We started with a book on friendship told from the perspective of a shy chipmunk who didn’t want to leave his mommy. Then we moved on to a story about Peteriffic building a block tower high into the sky. We finished with our Bible reading and knowing that we are in Holy Week I then showed my kids pictures of the Lord’s Supper and Good Friday. I told them that Jesus died so that everyone could be raised from the dead, and then, “Boom.” I was right in the middle of a conversation I wasn’t expecting to have on this ordinary bedtime, with late daylight streaming softly into my bedroom window.

“Will we all die, Mama?” asked Gabe, my three-year-old.

“Yes, but Jesus came so that we can live again. We will be raised from the dead—just like Him.”

“Will it be a long time until we get raised again?” asked Felicity worry in her little brow.

“I don’t think so.” I said, wanting only to take away all fear from these little tiny persons, and not ready for a conversation on the particulars of the afterlife.

“Will it hurt to die?” she asked.

I’m not even sure what I answered. But I know that I thought something vague about our mortality, along with gratefulness that these conversations would come again.

And now I sit and reflect on that conversation between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Will it hurt to die? It probably does… just like it hurts to birth a child.

But oh, isn’t the birth of a child merely a shadowy image of what it means to be birthed into life with Christ? How do I learn that? How do I teach that?

When Christ died, it was with great pain. And yet, He bore that pain to save the world.

Oh God, give us grace to understand what it was you did for us on Good Friday so long ago. And give us grace to teach that understanding. And give us hope that the joys of this life are but shadows of the joys in store for those who are raised in you.

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