Resurrection

by Jim Shelburne

It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like that first awful “good” Friday, the day that Jesus died. For the disciples, it seemed the end of everything, the most terminal of all dead ends. In just one week they had gone from being the King’s “cabinet members” to being “a dozen mice minus one rat,” scurrying away into the night as fearful fugitives amidst messianic mouse traps. For Mary, Christ’s mother, it was the fulfillment of the prophesied sword which not only pierced her heart but certainly rended her soul as well. For the others who had believed, who had held such hope and expectation for this man Jesus, this Friday was a crushing blow of apparent reality, another reminder that you can’t fight the government, you can’t change the church, you really can’t do much about anything at all, as “Goliath” wins another round.

It wasn’t much “good” at all, that first awful “good” Friday.

But which of us has not tasted, at least to some extent, the same bitterness on the menu that day? Which of us has not gone in one week from “having life by the tail,” being “on top of our game,” to the utter depths of despair as we crashed head-on into a dead end that we never even saw coming? Which of us has not stood at a grave or by a casket or at the foot of a hospital bed and watched as someone we loved more than life itself was tortured by a disease which was slowly ripping the life from them? Which of us has not placed our highest hopes and expectations on someone or something, only to find ourselves later wounded and bleeding from the shrapnel of the shards of our dreams?

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

Busted. Trashed.

Slashed. Burnt.

Destroyed.

And that makes the rest of this story, which is His story, the most important turnaround chapter in history! When all seemed utterly lost, just when the disaster had reached new limits, a brilliant light and a power heretofore unknown reversed the course of hopelessness forever. On that Sunday morning we now call Easter, the power of resurrection made it possible to call the Friday which had come before “good.”

If you’re living and breathing, you’re probably struggling in some way, too. The message of Easter and resurrection is that your darkest “Friday,” your worst fear, your most shattered dreams and obliterated hopes, can become the seed for your greatest confidence, your renewed dream, and a hope that is unassailable.

He is risen! Hallelujah!