Daily Devotion – April 2, 2021 – Pastor Brian Hansen
Today is Good Friday. The darkest day of the Christian Year. Tonight our service is one of somber silence as we hear again about Jesus death. There is something about the quiet darkness of tonight that speaks to the deepest parts of our soul.
If I’m honest with you, I find Marks telling of the final moments of Jesus’ earthly life a bit disheartening. There is very little hope within this part of Mark’s Gospel narrative. A story that began with hope and promise as Jesus’ brought a life giving message and ministry to those in need ends in bloody and savage judgement that culminates with Jesus being hung on a cross.
Jesus doesn’t die because God is angry with you and your sins, Jesus dies because he stood up for love. In the face of a government that is built on wielding power and violence over its people, Jesus stands up and proclaims God’s unyeilding love for the people of the world. And in the end he gets sentenced to death for it.
And when Jesus is on the cross, he prays the most human prayer of all – my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus comes proclaiming God’s love for the world but in his last breath, he can only express a deep absence of God. Jesus prays to God and hears nothing in return.  Something all of us can relate to, I think. So tonight, Jesus is comfort for those who have no comfort. Jesus is God for those who have no God.
Tonight we find in Jesus a God to whom we can cling even in our darkest hour when we feel alone and abandoned. Perhaps there is hope this day found in the God who experiences our deepest valleys and who experiences the powerful reality of death so that we might have life.
Let us pray: Today we simply pray thank you Jesus. Amen
