As we approach the Easter season, which some traditions call Lent in preparation of Christ’s crucifixion, how is your heart? How is my heart? In looking forward to a past event, how are our souls impacted? What emotions and feelings bubble to the surface as the gap shrinks?
Good Friday
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky.
A horror of great darkness at broad noon-
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
– Christina Rossetti
If Easter has become a routine holiday on the calendar and doesn’t shake us at our core, pray that the One greater than Moses would shatter any hardness of heart and that we would lament our sin and marvel again at Thy Blood’s slow loss.
