I know families who are talking to their children about an Easter bunny coming to hide Easter eggs for them this weekend. I know families, my own family included, who have completely abandoned these traditional Christian holidays, considering these long weekend days like any other days in their lives. And I know families who are keeping the Old Testament feasts instead. Each family is doing the best they know or believe.
For me this weekend stirs my heart.
This morning I attended my church’s Good Friday service. After over 20 years of not celebrating this traditional weekend, I was deeply touched as my pastor so passionately spoke about the day over 2,000 years ago on which Jesus was crucified. He elaborated on the silence of the three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Those three days in which God was seemingly silent and doing nothing, were the days in which the Son and the Father did the greatest work they have ever done.
The deep, heart-wrenching work of carrying my sin, my shame, and my past to death on the cross, and then offering me the gift of forgiveness, salvation, and redemption.
As my pastor spoke, I was reminded of the years of silence I lived in as a young adult. Silence that spanned so many years that I came to believe that God had abandoned me. And that He didn’t care for me.
Yet, I look back on those silent years of my life now, and I see the deep work that God did in my life through them. I wouldn’t be where I am at today, living in the grace and truth of God, without those silent years.
Sure. Would I have liked it better if God could have chosen a more comfortable way to bring me into a relationship with Him? Yes! But He chose these silent years of spiritual and emotional depression and loneliness. And these years molded me. They shaped me. They made me the person I am today. The person I need to be to fulfill the calling I believe God has placed on my life.
Yet, even though I know God has done an amazing work in my life already, I have to honestly say, that I still go through times of silence. I still battle depression. My heart still aches with unknown feelings at times.
So, today I choose to place my faith in the hope that Sunday is coming.
I choose to trust that God is not silent even if it seems He is.
I choose to believe that God’s work has just begun in my life.
And I choose to hope that in eternity it will be fully finished.
I hope you can believe that when you are in a wasteland, God is the water. When you are in the winter, God is the fire that burns. When you are in a long night, God is the sunrise. When you are in a desert, God is the river that turns to find you.
(paraphrased from Love Like This written by Lauren Daigle)
His love is the whisper that breaks your silence.
Because He loves you so much that He gave Jesus to suffer the silence of His voice on the cross, so that He could offer you redemption for your life!!
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