As the sun began to set, those who had followed the Lord could not let go of the events of the day. He had clearly told them, but what they had witnessed was beyond their imagination despite His words.

What would it have been like to be one of His disciples on that long, wrenching day at the end of such an incredible week?

I wonder.

Would I have steeled myself against the horror unfolding and clung to His words while still standing at the foot of the cross or would I have been one of those who were not present?

Would I have been overcome by grief and fear of what would happen next or would I have fallen prey to doubt?

So much had happened during this week…

The triumph of Palm Sunday had filled so many with hope and celebration! Then on Monday Jesus had entered the temple courts zealously overturning the tables of the moneychangers who were buying and selling. He was reminding them this place was to be a place of prayer and not one of robbers. A noisy melee broke out in the chaos of doves and money flying everywhere, people scrambling, and reeling at the scene. They had never seen Jesus this way.

Then on Tuesday as the disciples were walking along with Him, He had cursed the fig tree that was not producing fruit. How puzzled they seemed to be at how quickly the tree had withered before their very eyes! Once more He exhorted them if they had faith and believed as they prayed, what they prayed would be done.

How astonishing were those things the disciples witnessed, but now to think He was saying they could do such things was more than they could take in.

From there they went on to the temple courts that He had just cleared the day before and He was confronted by the chief priests and elders about where He had received authority to do what He had done. It was a trap they were setting for Him and He knew it. His wise answer rebuffed them and left them stymied as Jesus then refused to answer them and expose their unbelief.

Then came the Olivet Discourse where He warned the disciples through another story. This time He spoke of the foolish and wise virgins charging them to keep watch. To think this admonition came prior to that long night in the Garden of Gethsemane and yet they had not taken in the meaning for either the future or the present.

How Jesus loved them and longed for His disciples to hear and understand!

I think He does for us as well. How can I possibly judge their behavior when I am not always listening and hesitating to follow if I don’t understand what He has asked of me?

It was on Wednesday that Judas slipped away from the others and made his bargain with the chief priests to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Did his fellow disciples have any clue he might be tempted to do such a thing?

It reminds me that in the “now” those I share the journey of faith with are also tempted even as I can be. How deeply and openly I share my doubts, fears, and temptations may well determine my ability or their ability to withstand it and make all the difference in this walk with Him. That means that I need to be purposeful in my times with those closest to me to help guard their hearts and allow them to guard mine as well.

Thursday was a feast day, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Jesus directed His disciples where to go in the city and whom to speak with about preparing a place at his house for Jesus and His disciples to celebrate the feast.

When they were gathered there, Jesus broke bread and served wine giving thanks and once more giving them information few could likely grasp. He plainly told them they would not share this meal with Him again until they were together again in His Father’s kingdom.

They sang a hymn and then left for the Mount of Olives to the garden in Gethsemane. As they walked along in the moonlight, what was their conversation? Did they wonder at the interaction between Jesus and Judas? Did they question Judas abruptly leaving them?

Jesus wanted them to be with Him, to watch with Him, and to pray.

He knew and understood what lay before Him and despite His willingness to be obedient to His Father, His heart was in anguish and He asked His Father if there was any other way while still being willing to endure what lay ahead.

As the disciples looked back on that last sweet time with Jesus in the upper room and then their failure to watch with Him as he asked, were their own hearts burdened with guilt and shame for their failure?

The ugly scene of Judas arriving with soldiers to arrest Him angered them. How could he have done such a thing? Yet their own fear caused them to flee the scene. Peter’s curiosity brought him to the courtyard where early in the morning the prophecy Jesus had spoken about his betrayal would come to pass.

It was 6 AM on that Friday that Jesus would stand before Pilate. It had been a long night. He had already suffered much, but within an hour He was sent on to Herod for a decision on what to do with Him. Pilate must have hoped Herod would handle things, but instead he was returned to Pilate where Pilate looked for a way out and offered to release one of the prisoners. The priests had spurred on the crowd and elders who had arranged the betrayal by Judas to choose Barabbas rather than Jesus.

So in the end, as Old Testament prophets had foretold, Jesus was sentenced to death and by 8AM had been led away to Calvary. An hour later the grisly crucifixion had begun with only a handful of those He loved standing nearby to testify to the events. They were the ones who watched the soldiers casting lots for his clothing and heard the insults and mocking railed at Him.

These few would bear witness to the exchange Jesus had with the criminal crucified to one side of Him who was promised paradise. They also heard His words to His mother and the admonition to John to care for her as a son.

By noon that day, darkness covered the scene and at 1PM Jesus cried out to His Father and spoke of His thirst. By 2PM they would hear His final words “It is finished”. At the end of the ninth hour, the soldiers would thrust a spear in His side to assure He was dead. An earthquake would occur and then as sunset approached He was taken from the cross and Joseph of Arimathea offered his own tomb as a burial place.

The sun sank further and further and I might think the disciples’ hearts weighed heavy as it dipped below the horizon.

Was it all over?

What would become of them?

It was God’s darkest hour as He set aside His Son’s life for me, for you, for any who believe in Him.

Good Friday?

Perhaps we for whom He died can say it was good because He gave us the best gift we could have ever received.

He gave us life with Him.

Thanks to cell phones and other mobile devices most all of us are capturing special moments, snapshots, to record events. I use them as well, but prefer my digital camera and my great lens to capture something that tells a story all by itself.

I cannot recall when I got my first camera and began snapping photos. I am certain it goes back to the days of being a Brownie or Girl Scout, but when I worked as a “stringer” for a local newspaper, I began to look through the camera lens differently. I knew I could snap a picture, but could I take a photo that told (or helped tell) a story? It was then that I started to look through my camera lens differently and that quest has remained to the present.

Our photos on whatever device we use catch moments in time because those moments are special to us and because we want to remember. I am not sure as I look at some of these in my own albums if they really help me recall or give me only a glimpse that cannot really fully bring back the memory.

The truth is that I have discovered the most extraordinary “snapshots” take place on seemingly very ordinary days and most of them were never shot through the lens of a camera. These “snapshots” are recalled vividly and were often captured by the lens in my mind and heart when there was no camera in my hand. These seem to be recorded indelibly and are not one or two dimensional, but truly full of meaning and emotion.

One of those “snapshots” is of my dad when I was a child as I watched him walk through a field on the farm where I grew up. I can see him clearly walk along with his straw hat and fiddle seeder. I have captured his pace and speed as well and when that “photo” comes to mind, it never fails to warm my heart because it gives me a special glimpse of him. Even if a camera had been in my hand, it could not have captured what I see through the lens within me.

There was also another picture of my dad slowly walking through the house gently patting my newborn son’s back when he was struggling with colic. My dad would be barely moving his feet and yet it seemed to soothe our son in ways I could not. It was a dear picture to me since my son and I were then living with my parents while my husband was overseas on active duty. My dad never appeared to tire of doing this for an hour at a time to soothe his precious grandson. How could a camera lens capture the emotion connected with this?

Another such “snapshot” causes relief and joy to bubble up within me as no photograph can. It is one of my 24-year-old U.S. Marine Captain walking off a plane at 6AM on an Easter Sunday morning after being separated by a war half a world away for 14 months. I see his familiar walk, his deep tan, and how thin he is, but the lens within captures something beyond that and even 57 years later brings a similar set of feelings to my heart.

Our memories tend to be recorded almost like a kaleidoscope and sorted randomly, sometimes inaccurately. I think that is why we use our cameras so often.

I now routinely carry some sort of camera with me most every day, but as I go through a typical day when there is no special event to capture I now pause to glimpse through the lens within. In those moments, I see things differently, better, and perhaps more clearly. Those are the very best “snapshots” and they are mine alone.

Photo by Pam Ecrement

Photo by Cottonbro Studio from Pexels

How do you honestly answer that question?  

I am not sure most of us like it very much in nearly all its forms because it means we cannot do or be what we want. That includes not wanting anything or anyone to be in control of us. We are not unlike the unbroken horses that want to run free without bit, bridle, or reins. In different ways we can fight those as they do. And it starts early in childhood when a parent or adult stands in our way from the food, toy, or anything else we want. We are not yet old enough to know what is harmful or not good for us but is it possible remnants of that linger in us well into adulthood?

Our responses to discipline are shaped by more than one or two things. Does whoever is doing the discipline show us love consistently or does the discipline we receive come in a torrent of anger and disappointment in us? Does it come with words of gentle guidance?

Whatever each of us answers to these questions gets projected onto God. No matter how wonderful our parents may have been, we only have one perfect parent, Father God. His disappointment and anger at the sin of mankind was satisfied by Jesus’ offer and willingness to be the pure sacrificial lamb on the cross, so if we accept Him means we never need to live in fear of God’s anger.

Photo by Cottonbro Studio from Pexels

“On your worst , most rebellious, and most faithless day, you can run into the holy presence of your heavenly Father and he will not turn you away. Your acceptance has not been and never will be, based on your performance. You have not been welcomed into an eternal relationship with God because you kept the law, but because Jesus did. If you obey God for a thousand years, you have not earned more of his acceptance than you were granted the very first time you believed.” 

Paul Tripp

We get it wrong when we think that means He will not discipline us and relates to how we struggle with grace. Too often we believed we weren’t loved when we were disciplined. We didn’t understand not running into the street was an issue or that eating too much candy or ice cream would make us sick. As adults our own self-discipline is not always strong or healthy and it gets even more out of focus if a rigid discipleship program misses the unbelievable foundation of our relationship with God – grace. 

Why?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Because sometimes we believe discipline is punishment as we have experienced it but not so with a relationship with God through Christ. Christ took all the punishment for our misdeeds, failures, and unwise choices from the past, now, and in the future. God’s discipline is meant to transform us in ways we cannot imagine, not limit or deny us his love or the best He desires for us. It’s not teaching us how to earn our place with Him or his goodness. Only when we see ourselves as we truly are can we be in wonder at his love and grace. Our love pales in comparison even on our better or best days. 

Christ denied himself everything to the point of crying out on the cross as the Godman, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  How blind we are when we miss the enormity of that even as we reflect on this during the Lenten season and approach Good Friday. 

We have a much harder time with denial even if we give up one or two things to commemorate Lent. As Lent draws closer to an end and Easter, we already can be tempted to count down the days until we can have what we gave up for a brief time. What do we really know about sacrifice?

Perhaps many revere those who gave so much for so many during the horrors of WW II is because of the evidence of sacrifice starkly played out in front of us. Little wonder they are called “the Greatest Generation.”  Have we forgotten what they gave everything for? Have we as believers missed how much transformation is still needed in each of our lives? 

Grace reminds us we are entitled to nothing but were given everything.

“God’s discipline is an instrument of his grace. It is a continuation of his work of personal heart-and-life transformation, God’s discipline is not him turning his angry back on us. It is God turning his face of grace toward us once again, and he will continue to do this until his grace has finished its work.” 

Paul Tripp

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels

Some of you may recall the well-known German children’s fairytale about two children named Hansel and Gretel who went walking in the deep woods leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back home. Sadly, it didn’t work out very well for them because the breadcrumbs are eaten by various animals and they are lured into a trap by a wicked witch in a house made of gingerbread and candy.

Most of us would never trust a trail made of breadcrumbs and in the modern era we would be pulling out our phones to GPS our way into the woods and back home again.

The image of a breadcrumb trail also can be a metaphor of how we follow a path little-by-little without being clear of the direction it will sometimes take us to lead us to the place we are to go.

Eric and Kristen Hill use that metaphor in their powerful book, The First Breakfast, to describe how Jesus, the Bread of Life, led his disciples little by little along a path to deepen their understanding of who He really was as well as show them who they really were.

In this Lenten season when our attention it being pulled to stories of violence and uncertainty of all kinds, is it possible that we have forgotten He is leading us through this time as He led them through those last days and hours to show us more of who He is as well as who we are?

It was a time of testing for the disciples of Jesus during those last precious days and hours as He talked intimately with them, shared a meal with them, prayed with them, and gently told them who they would show themselves to be in the terrible hours of his arrest and crucifixion.

This is a time of testing for us even as it was for the disciples then that will reveal who He is and how we relate to Him, if we not only know about Him but enjoy an intimate relationship with Him. Some of us might already be discovering our words spoken so assuredly just weeks ago when life was easier fall silent now. Deep inside we may wonder if we will pass this test or like Peter, proclaim without question that we will do so.

So much is written about Peter during those last hours before the cross. Much of what is said is negative because it appears, he failed the test. But when you think of those passages, take another look. In the midst of a large group of soldiers armed to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane where the odds were not in Peter’s favor, he was willing to take up a sword against all caution to try to defend Jesus. You might say he was impulsive and perhaps he was, but he also displayed courage.

It was also Peter of all the disciples who followed after Jesus to where He would be questioned and beaten. Peter came as close as he could be to be near Jesus. I have no doubt the words Jesus had spoken to him about denying him were long forgotten until after the rooster crowed.

It is at that moment that Peter can also look across the courtyard as Jesus is being led away and for this last time Jesus looks directly into Peter’s eyes according to Luke 22:60-62.

What must that have been like for him?

In The First Breakfast Eric and Kristen Hill write that the Greek word used to describe the look between them is one that means an “earnest look that penetrates the heart.”  “It is to look in a sustained, concentrated way, with special ‘interest, love, or concern’.” It is also the same word used in John 1:42 when Jesus first called Peter and Andrew to follow Him.

So how could Peter deny Him?

Was he simply a coward when he had not given that impression as he traveled for three years with Jesus?

Eric and Kristen Hill posit a different perspective to consider:

“…underneath his denial is a current of pain and confusion, and a deep desire for the script to be different. Maybe his mind was filled with thoughts like, “No! This isn’t how It is supposed to be! He’s God! I’ve seen it with my own eyes! And he’s just giving up? I guess He isn’t who I thought He was at all. He winningly gave Himself over to be arrested, beaten, and spit on – I don’t know that man at all.”

We cannot say what the truth is, but when I consider the words of these writers it is not hard to imagine given my own life experience of how I respond to someone doing something so different than what I believe they would ever do.

This part of the gospel story is poignant for so many reasons, but during this troubling time in our own world we may yet be surprised at our own response to and about the Lord. If we do not respond as we think we might or hope we would, there is also another image in this story we must not miss.

Both times Jesus looked at Peter, there was only love in his eyes

How can that be? Wouldn’t He have been disappointed even though Jesus knew what Peter would say and do?

That’s where the stunning truth shines clearly:

“But in the eyes of Jesus, there is only love. The gaze of Jesus holds forgiveness for sin. He sees us not as we are, but as we are in Him.”

Eric and Kristen Hill

^“38 So now I live with the confidence that there is nothing in the universe with the power to separate us from God’s love. I’m convinced that his love will triumph over death, life’s troubles, fallen angels, or dark rulers in the heavens. There is nothing in our present or future circumstances that can weaken his love. ³⁹ There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!”

Romans 8:38-39 (TPT)

There may be some who say they don’t sing or “can’t sing” but that would really usually mean they don’t do it very well so you would never hear them doing it even if you slipped outside the door of their shower. But not doing it well doesn’t mean that one cannot do it even if they prefer (or even others prefer) they don’t do it.

It isn’t uncommon to see a child create a makeshift microphone when they are singing and playing, and most do so without shyness as long it isn’t in front of a lot of people or on a stage with lights blinding them. A bit later some will discover the lights, the audience, and the stage are exactly the place they want to sing for the sheer enjoyment of it.

The experience of worship involves more than singing, but when we hear the word worship most all of us will immediately relate it to an experience that includes music and singing. So, when the issue of places of worship meeting during the pandemic came up it was no surprise that when singing was going to be banned because of the fear of spreading the virus, most of us were more than a little upset.

“There are songs everywhere in scripture. The people of God sing. They express exuberance in realizing the majesty of God and the mercy of Christ, the wholeness of the reality and their new-found ability to participate in it. Songs proliferate. Hymns gather the voices of men, women, and children into century-tiered choirs.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

We sing alone. We sing as families. We sing in ensembles and choirs and great gatherings. Something about the sound of the blending of music, voices, and instruments evokes deep connection within us and emotion stirs within our hearts, minds, and spirits before echoing in our memory long after the singing stops.

But if worship sings (and it does) what do we say singing is?

“Singing is speech intensified and expanded. Song takes the natural rhythms and timbre of speech and develops its accents and intonations into music.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

When I read Peterson’s description, I was aware that was the best description ever! He added a few lines later as an explanation of why we must sing when we worship.

“When persons of faith become aware of who God is and what he does, they sing. The songs are irrepressible.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

One of the sweet memories in my life is the sound of my dad singing when we were standing beside each other in church. He would have told you that my mother was the one who was the singer. She was involved in singing in a trio and quartet and directed our children’s choir and certainly did a lot of singing, but it was my gentle humble dad’s melodious voice that blessed me and I can hardly wait to hear what it sounds like in heaven when we are all gathered around the throne of God.

I was blessed to grow up with those memories and in a family who loved music. I married a man who did as well, and the tradition went on to our son and daughter. Now new memories are made as our grandchildren sing and take their gifts to new levels.

It seems clear that God intends we sing and in scripture in multiple places it says that if we do not praise Him and sing, the rocks themselves will cry out. If we look at the closing scenes of scripture in Revelation 4 and 5, we see that all creation is singing. And what results from that worship?

“The end result of the act of worship is that our lives are turned around. We come to God with a history of nay-saying, of rejecting, and being rejected. At the throne of God we are immersed in God’s yes, a yes that silences our noes and calls forth an answering yes in us. God, not the ego, is the center. God is not someone around whom we make calculating qualifications, a little yes here, a little no there. In worship we “listen to the voice of Being” and become answers to it. The self is no longer the hub of reality, as sin seduces us into supposing.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

Yes! Of course, we must sing in worship and when we do, it honors the One who is song and music, and we are changed by it.