CCI Update: Good Friday, April 10, 2020

Coronavirus, War, Two Deaths, and… HOPE!

On Ash Wednesday I was traveling to Ukraine, there were people everywhere with ashes on their foreheads. “We come from dust and we are returning to dust.” In the pre-Coronavirus world we believed this only in individual cases, the world was too large and busy to be dust.

Like everyone else in the world our lives and ministry have changed considerably in the past month. Kenny returned from Ukraine two days before air travel was suspended. All our small group meetings have been moved online to help slow the spread of the virus.

This week our church family from Gorlovka suffered two deaths: Anna Ivanovna, an elderly woman who has been homebound for several years, and Miroslava, a young woman who grew up in our church family. Anna lived a long life and died “full of years,” while Miroslava was in her mid-twenties, an apparent casualty of the ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine. I don’t personally remember a Holy Week so full of tragic news…

And yet the first Holy Week was just such a week. It began with such promise on Palm Sunday when Jesus was welcomed to Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David!” and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” It ended with a crowd shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” It is only in hindsight that we call today “Good Friday.” The first disciples simply thought their world had ended!

But they were wrong. They failed to understand the ways that Jesus prepared them for this difficult moment. Although they were warned several times of the events of the week in Jerusalem, they could not imagine a suffering and dying Messiah even though Isaiah plainly said, “By his wounds we are healed.” It took the events of Resurrection Sunday (Easter) to put things into proper focus. Jesus’ death was a tragedy, but it was a tragedy designed to lead to triumph. You can literally see hope rising as the truth of the resurrection of Jesus began to dawn on them!

As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday, let us never forget that life triumphs over death because of the grace of the risen Savior. Because of Jesus we have hope!