maybe something like hope

My friend, Anne, creates a beautiful Good Friday Service for my church community (and the church we rent space from) each year. It is a service done in candlelight and silence, with stations set up around the room to help one enter into the story of the Cross.

The best word I can think of to describe myself these last few weeks of lent is ambivalent. It is not the word I would hope for myself as we are one day away from the mother-of-all days. Words, images, stories that once penetrated my heart and made me feel alive, now just sound cliche and I am struggling to hold on to the Story.

But this is faith, isn't it? (Please tell me it is.) Continuing on even when I don't feel right or good or sure or anything. I keep coming back to the old Keith Green song: My eyes are dry, my faith is old, my heart is hard, my prayers are cold. And I know how I ought to be, alive to you and dead to me. But what can be done for an old heart like mine? Soften it up with oil and wine. The oil is you, your spirit of love. Please wash me anew with the wine of your blood. If I song can be a prayer, I guess that's mine.

To be honest, I didn't have much hope for myself as I entered into the Good Friday Service. I sat with my cup of juice and piece of bread waiting, hoping, praying for anything. Something (please, dear God) to break through to my heart, to connect with the story again...and then I took communion more in an act of obedience and surrender than anything else.

I decided to leave the service early mostly because I was really hungry and looking forward to dinner. I stood up to leave and noticed a woman in the front of the sanctuary. Three crosses are up on the stage and pillows are arranged on the floor for a place where you can kneel, lay, sit...however you feel like worshiping at the foot of the Cross. This beautiful woman (I did not know her) was kneeling at the Cross, her arms up and outstretched towards it, and she was rocking back and forth, only taking her hands down once in a while to wipe her tears away. Again, this was up on the stage, in front of everybody.

Words fail me as I try to get to the heart of what it was like to watch her. Part envy, part joy, part hunger (for much more than dinner), part sadness, part hope. I feel more lost than found these days and watching her was so good, but so hard too. I know what it is she is feeling: love. Love for a Savior, love for a good Father. And the words feel heavy in my heart as I write them.