Good Friday

Between Lament and Hope

As I sit down to write on this Good Friday, I find myself caught between two poetic voices that speak profoundly to this sacred day - Christina Rossetti's yearning for resurrection and Edna St. Vincent Millay's raw refusal to accept death quietly that I read about this morning in the Biola U Lenten devo.

On this day of all days, we pause at the foot of the cross, acknowledging the reality of suffering. The FSU community, shattered by senseless violence that took precious lives – including friends of our community. Clients walking through devastating losses. A world where pain continues unabated.

Rossetti's words echo the barrenness that often precedes resurrection:

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;

There are moments when we feel this emptiness acutely – when tragedy strikes without warning, when grief leaves us wordless, when our capacity for hope seems exhausted. Good Friday invites us to acknowledge these broken places honestly, to bring them before the One who is intimately acquainted with suffering.

Yet alongside this humble surrender stands another voice – Millay's defiant lament that refuses easy consolation:

"I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground."

This, too, has its place in our Good Friday meditation. The divine story has room for both – the quiet acceptance that transformation requires surrender and the holy protest against death's seeming finality. Both voices speak truth. Both belong in our prayers.

When we hear of lives cut short at FSU, when we sit with clients (or friends, family, ourselves) navigating profound loss or dysregulation, we feel the tension between these voices within ourselves.

We acknowledge suffering while refusing to give it the final word. We surrender to the mystery while also crying out against the darkness.

This is the narrow path we walk on Good Friday – resisting both denial of pain and surrender to despair. We stand, like Millay, unresigned to death's apparent victory, while also trusting, like Rossetti, that our broken bowls might yet be transformed:

Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:

What makes this day "good" is not that suffering is good, but that even here — especially here —love persists. Love descended into our darkness. Love absorbed our pain. Love refuses to abandon us, even in death.

So today, we pause in this sacred tension. We honor the losses at FSU and in our own lives. We allow ourselves both Rossetti's surrender and Millay's holy defiance. We give voice to grief while still whispering that Sunday approaches.

My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

On this Good Friday, may we find courage to dwell in the space between lament and hope, knowing that both are held in the wounded hands of Love.

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A Prayer for Good Friday:

Jesus who knows suffering,

Today we bring our hearts before you – joyful moments and lament moments both.

Our grief for lives lost,

Our weariness from carrying others' pain,

Our personal sorrows and collective wounds.

Like Millay, we are not resigned to death's apparent victory. Like Rossetti, we surrender our brokenness to be transformed by the Love of Christ.

Grant us courage to remain In this holy tension, Neither denying our pain Nor surrendering to despair. As we release, let us also remember the words in Matthew 11:28-29, “Come to me all you who are tired, and I will give you rest.”

Melt and remold our broken pieces Into vessels that can hold both Friday's grief and Sunday's promise, both honest lament and defiant hope.

May it be so.

Amen.