on Good Friday and the in-between.

I lost someone very close to me more than a few years ago now. 

There's something about the days after someone you've held close suddenly leaves your side. When you won't be hearing their voice or saying their name anymore. 

It makes you think on the in-between

I've learned that as long as I'm here walking this sod, I'll be between where I've been and where I'm going. The "now and not yet". And that at the end of the days counted for me, I'll be met by the same open arms once stretched across that tree so long ago. 

The people there that day who loved Him, we don't know much of their personal grief. The text is fairly silent on the subject.  Although they didn't know it yet, they too found themselves walking the in-between. Before the dawn of that third day their was the tremendous loss of a friend, a son, a brother, a healer...how did they walk away from the rugged cross?  The ache, the rawness, the sting of hell for two dark days. His friends no longer heard His voice or His laugh. His mother met with silence when she called His name.  None knew of a Savior risen.

They couldn't have known He was saving their life. They didn't yet know His victory over the grave.  They couldn't fathom a morning of voices raised in hymns of redemption. They walked away with seemingly empty hands and no Sunday school lesson telling them otherwise.   

"Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?"

                                    -John Donne

We awoke this Good Friday morning with a knowledge of how the story ends.  We have a living Companion, a friend. He is to us what He was to them, those at the cross that solemn day. And with them we await the coming of our risen Savior.