“It is finished.”
And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.
On this Good Friday morning, I’m struck by the simplicity of this moment and the tension created by what followed. Jesus uttered, “It is finished” and then gave His spirit over, and it truly was the end of many things… the torture, the crucifixion, his suffering. But it was also the beginning of so much! The true beginning of the Church that would rise from the tragedy, the beginning of so many new lives in Christ, the beginning of our living with the knowledge that all he endured he had endured for us. And yet…
And yet, there is still so much suffering. The suffering of the sick, the down trodden, the oppressed. The helpless, the hopeless, the depressed. The lonely, the broken hearted, the lost. The poor, the hungry, and even the rich and well-fed. We are all suffering in so many ways, all waiting (hoping?) for the time when we might finally bow our own heads and give over our own spirits.
“It is finished,” He said. And it was. And yet…
From eternity Christ came to show the depth of love that is possible even by time-bound man. Now with His Father, He is with all in their pain, having suffered “our pain” to the extreme.The Problem of Pain is my favorite C.S. Lewis work on why suffering is still prevalent in our world.It is our world of free will and the freely available choice: to love God and our neighbor, in return, in everything we do.
Well said. We spend a lot of our time thankful for the joys and bounty we are bless with and not enough time thinking about those with so much less. God is love, love is the law.Edgar Cayce
Beautiful!!Thank you for sharing this!!
Jim, thanks for sharing this. It is a good reminder of what He commands us in Mark 16:15 – “He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.'”