April already! As the weather warms up and flowers and trees start blooming, we are without a doubt entering a new season. This time of year marks a nice transition as we start putting away winter gear and put on our fall jackets, in anticipation for warmer weather ahead. Along with the seasons changing, April is also the time of Easter this year.
Easter weekend shares a lot of similarities with this idea of the seasons changing. Easter is about the greatest change that has ever happened in history, the moment of Jesus’s crucifixion, death, and victorious resurrection. Today is Good Friday, an important day in Easter weekend. This is the day when we remember Jesus’s suffering, crucifixion, and death. It’s a solemn time when we reflect on Jesus taking on our sins and willingly going to the cross.
At intercession last Wednesday, we spent some time thinking about how our lives relate to Easter. Maybe some of us today feel like we’re in a “Good Friday” kind of place. For Jesus, Good Friday was a time of loneliness, anxiety, and stress. It was a time of suffering, the day that he made His way to the cross and took on the weight of the world.
Maybe today you relate to the feelings of Good Friday. Maybe you’re dealing with your own feelings of anxiety, stress, or sickness. If so, we can take comfort in the fact that what makes Good Friday good is that Jesus is able to relate to the place we’re in. Isaiah 53 is a prophecy about Jesus as the one who would carry our sufferings, be despised, and be struck down for our crimes. Read verse 3-5 below:
Isaiah 53:3-5
3 He was despised and avoided by others;
a man who suffered, who knew sickness well.
Like someone from whom people hid their faces,
he was despised, and we didn’t think about him.4 It was certainly our sickness that he carried,
and our sufferings that he bore,
but we thought him afflicted,
struck down by God and tormented.
5 He was pierced because of our rebellions
and crushed because of our crimes.
He bore the punishment that made us whole;
by his wounds we are healed.
Jesus not only suffered for us at the cross, but also continues to suffer with us when we suffer. He understands what it means to be afflicted with sickness, to feel despised and avoided, and to have pain in this life. Jesus is strong enough to carry us through the harshest seasons in life, because He understands and went through it Himself.
Would you take some time to pray for people you know of who may be struggling? It may be with sickness, stress, anxiety, or other burdens. When we pray, we stand in the gap and help others shoulder their burdens. We pray full of hope, remembering that Jesus is the one who is truly able to relate to us in our hard times, and bring comfort to our hearts. And as we pray, we remember that Easter Sunday is just around the corner, the day we will be able to celebrate God’s breakthrough and restoration.