Reexamining Values

18Apr
Surely he has borne our infirmities
  and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
  struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
  crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
  and by his bruises we are healed.
 All we like sheep have gone astray;
  we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
  the iniquity of us all. 
-Isaiah 53:4 – 6


The Good Friday service has always stirred me emotionally. As a teenager my family lived in the mountains of North Carolina. The early spring brought rain and chilly, dark days. But usually by Easter the weather had turned sunny, and the dogwoods, azaleas, and rhododendron were in bloom. The gloomy days turning to blooms on the mountains was the glorious Easter story for me. 


In my 40s when my children were half grown, I went through a personal crisis and realized that my suffering was the result of my own lack of honesty with myself. A Good Friday service at this time changed my outlook. I heard the Good Friday liturgy as Jesus’s sacrificial love for me and all of humanity. Accepting this love made possible a loving reexamination of my values. Although I still strive to be a person worthy of this love, embracing the gift of Jesus’s death makes it possible for me to maintain the struggle for a more positive engagement with life. 

Musical Reflection - Surely He Hath Born Our Griefs' from Handel's Messiah -Royal Choral Society


We thank you, that our heavenly Father sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved; that all who believe in him might be delivered from the power of sin and death, and become heirs with him of everlasting life. We pray, therefore,  for people everywhere according to their needs. Amen.

Old TestamentLoveEaster

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