I’ve been pretty quiet on my public platforms since COVID-19 hit our country. It seems like anyone with any kind of following is expected to have wisdom to offer, to have some way to make sense of things that, to our finite understanding, just don’t make sense.
Friends, I don’t have much to offer. I see people who are jumping on this unique opportunity, starting Zoom Bible studies and online ministries and showering us with their creativity and plunging headlong into their works-in-progress. I greatly admire these people. Even envy them a little.
Because I am not one of them.
Right now, at the House of Wen, we’re in survival mode. For almost a month now, we’ve been navigating online school, private lessons via FaceTime and Zoom, and the financial ramifications of a closed clinic for my husband and canceled performances for me.
We’re also grieving. We miss our family. We miss our friends. We miss gathering in person with our church. We miss the events we’d anticipated that now won’t take place.
These losses pale in comparison to the losses suffered by some. And I grieve for those who’ve lost loved ones to COVID-19. Those who live in fear that they’ll be next to catch the virus. Those whose once-in-a-lifetime events have been canceled. Those who’ve permanently lost jobs and now have no idea how they’ll pay their rent or feed their families.
The whole world has been upended, and although we know God is in control, these days that control seems difficult to find.
The disciples knew this feeling well. They’d witnessed life as they knew it crumble to dust in a matter of hours.
The man they’d followed for three years, the one they knew as teacher, as friend, as Messiah, sold out by one of their own and arrested before their eyes.
Hands that had calmed a storm, healed blind beggars, fed a crowd of thousands with a little boy’s lunch, and washed his friends’ feet mere hours before now bound with rough rope and destined for executioners’ nails.
Shoulders upon which these eleven had rested their heads and pinned their hopes now torn by whips. Covered with the purple robe of mockery. Crushed beneath the weight of a Roman cross.
The voice that called the sons of Zebedee to fish for men, that taught them how to pray, that summoned Lazarus from the grave, now cried out in unfathomable anguish.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Those who heard Jesus’ words doubtless echoed them in their own souls.
Where are you, God?
Why have you forsaken us?
We have the privilege of seeing the whole picture. The world was indeed upended, in the best possible way. The veil torn. The barriers between God and man disintegrated. The price for all sin, past, present, and future, paid in full.
Forty or so hours later, these scattered eleven would receive the surprise of their lives.
But they didn’t know that.
And that Friday was very dark indeed.
I think sometimes we Christians want to rush through Good Friday. I know I do. Why linger in the heartache of Friday when that’s not the end of the story? When Sunday is just around the corner?
But this year is forcing me to look on the Cross, on those disciples, on those dark hours of suffering, in a new way.
Like the disciples, we’re holed up in our homes. Isolated. Cut off.
We’re fearful. We’re grieving. We’re unsure as to next steps.
We don’t see God in this.
Nothing makes sense.
Deliverance is coming. We know this. We don’t know when, and we don’t know what it will look like, but God will come through for us. He’s promised this. In this world you will have trouble, Jesus warned. But take heart, for I have overcome the world.
Like the Cross, we want to rush through the first part of that verse. “Yeah, but—“ we always want to say. “It’ll all be okay in the end!”
Yes. It will. God—who does not change—has always been in the business of restoration, reformation, and resurrection. He will bring beauty from these ashes in countless ways. Someday, we will be able to see his hand in all this. We’ll be able to point to this moment as one that changed us, defined us, remade us.
But we’re not to that moment yet.
We’re in this one.
In this world, we’re having trouble.
Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t leave us alone in trouble. He is close to the brokenhearted. He binds their wounds. A bruised reed he does not break, and a smoldering wick he does not snuff out. He knows our humanity. Our limited understanding of why he allows what he allows, why so much of his brilliant plan must first be refined by the fires of suffering.
He knows us. He loves us.
And he is with us in the chaos. In the grief. When we don’t know what to do. When we don’t know what’s next.
When we sit in the darkness with nothing to offer anyone.
Because that is when his light shines the brightest.