This is the ninth in the UCCDM Lenten Devotional Series for 2014. This reflections comes from Rev. Peggy Davis Dunn, UCCDM Board Member and former Chair. Her bio can be found on the Board of Directors page.
Good Friday
I am poured out like water, and all my bones have fallen apart; my heart is like wax; it melts inside of me; my strength is dried up like a piece of broken pottery. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you’ve set me down in the dirt of death. Psalm 22: 14-15 CEB
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light. John 1:5 CEB
I write this reflection sitting on a couch in a room in the Walter Reed Military Hospital in Bethesda MD. About six feet away from me lies a grandson whose body was broken in a horrific car accident about 6 weeks ago. We are here this week to be with him and to give his mom some companionship and respite as she accompanies him on his journey back from the days when he was given a 5% chance of survival. His trauma has involved having both arms and both legs broken, broken ribs with internal injuries, extensive facial damage including the loss of an eye and some hopefully temporary brain injury. Parts of his body which are whole have been drawn from to repair parts of his body which are broken. His rehabilitation has involved 21 surgeries so far, and this journey will likely go on for about a year. His body will not be the same as it was before his accident.
His pain has been great and his body has been broken. His life path has been altered in a split second. The words of Psalm 22 above are apt.
But daily we see him return to the land of the living. He gains strength and capacity. He moves more steps forward than back.
Good Friday is the day when Christians reflect on the suffering of Christ on a cross outside of Jerusalem, on the willingness of Jesus to endure the suffering of crucifixion. The suffering of Christ then, and the suffering of this grandson now, are very real. But suffering is not the last word, then or now. Suffering itself is not redemptive, on Jesus’ part, or anyone else’s. What is redemptive is the Spirit that sustains in the experience of the suffering. And the Light which shines in the Darkness even when we cannot see it. We believe, in the words of John’s gospel, that the darkness of our lives cannot extinguish the light, tho the darkness be very real, and very dark. The light is found in the darkness. In our various ways, we hold that faith.
