Carolyn Arends writes: \u2018Easter Sunday is the Christian faith\u2019s gold medal victory lap\u2026 the Happily Ever After\u2026 But I dread Good Friday\u2026 images of torture and suffering\u2026 the terrible recollected cry, \u201cMy God, why hast thou forsaken Me?\u201d<\/i> Left to my own devices, I\u2019d probably skip Good Friday. But\u2026 if I did, Easter morning would become increasingly hollow. I\u2019d forget how much my salvation cost\u2026 I\u2019d start to believe that you can have victory without sacrifice\u2026 I\u2019d buy the lie that Christ\u2019s\u2026 victory over death\u2014and my decision to follow him\u2014means life will be trouble-free\u2026 The Biblical writers\u2026 encourage us to consider suffering\u2026 an opportunity to identify with Christ\u2026 to take up His cross. Yet\u2026 when the job is lost, or the tumour is malignant, or the friendship is betrayed, we grieve not only the wound but also the fact that we can be wounded. We feel\u2026 Jesus has let us down. We don\u2019t consider it \u201cpure joy\u201d<\/i>\u2026 So how do<\/i> we become Easter Sunday Christians? When I\u2019m expecting Easter Sunday and I get Good Friday\u2026 [I try] to remember that God\u2019s definition of \u201cgood\u201d\u2026 far exceeds my own\u2026 that almost all the new beginnings\u2026 have come from what felt\u2026 like terrible endings\u2026 What seems like a small (but devastating) death is actually a chance at new life.\u2019 <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re struggling to see the \u2018good\u2019 in your situation, hear this: \u2018Life from nothing began through Him, and life from the dead began through Him, and He is, therefore, justly called the Lord of all\u2026 through Him God planned to reconcile\u2026 everything on earth and everything in Heaven by virtue of the sacrifice of the cross.\u2019<\/i> (Colossians\u00a01:18\u201320\u00a0PHPS<\/sup>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carolyn Arends writes: \u2018Easter Sunday is the Christian faith\u2019s gold medal victory lap\u2026 the Happily Ever After\u2026 But I dread Good Friday\u2026 images of torture and suffering\u2026 the terrible recollected cry, \u201cMy God, why hast thou forsaken Me?\u201d Left to my own devices, I\u2019d probably skip Good Friday. But\u2026 if I did, Easter morning would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}