Friday, April 15, 2022
When God seems absent
An excerpt from Psalm 22:14,18 (NRSV)
I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; my heart within my breast is melting wax. Be not far away, O Lord; you are my strength; hasten to help me.
Reflection from The Rev. Bryan Cones,
Trinity Episcopal Church:
I cannot say Good Friday is an easy day – it just seems to be repeated on so many Fridays, on so many other days, in so many places. Today is the day that I ask myself to sit, really sit, with all the crosses of the world. And I am encouraged somehow that God in Jesus experienced the same brokenness, all the way to death, and, even more, drew life from it. And so when God seems most absent, when my bones are out of joint or my heart melts like wax, still I am confident that God is never far away.
For further study and prayer, the readings assigned for today are:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42
MUSIC
“The Agony”
Suzy Born, Trinity Episcopal Church,
Meghan Guse, soprano;
John Bicknell, Aeolian-Skinner organist
poem by George Herbert
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of the seas, of states,
and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.
Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.
Tags: Holy Week 2022