No Good

Dark nights never seem to have an end when you are going through them. One night from my past I remember vividly was in January, 2005. I was on the floor of my apartment, balled up in a fetal position, enduring a kind of acute psychic pain only someone who has gone through the most major of depressions can know. The best way I can describe it is that your mind is on the rack being stretched to its breaking point, and your body has shut down in response unable to deal with the trauma.

There is an eerie calm that descends when the possibility of taking your own life enters into the picture at these moments. It's like a salesman has mysteriously appeared at your door of suffering before dawn, offering something you so desperately want and need--peace, rest, and an end. The price is high, but you're not really thinking about that. It's a pivotal moment in the cosmos, when you'll use your free-will to make a choice, for the last time on earth.

If we are following in the footsteps of Jesus, Gethsemane is an unavoidable stop on the journey to Calvary. Our friends are asleep, and we are alone with our destiny in the garden and the cup presented before us, that we beg to be taken away. We know what lies before us, but we see no way out aside from what the Devil salesman puts before us. Hence the urging of Jesus, "Pray that you may not undergo the test!" Not our will, but his be done.


Good Friday is only 'good' in retrospect, after the Easter story has been told. Hanging on a pre-Easter cross, the only thing to be seen is failure: failed Kingdoms-to-come, failed revolutions, failed man, failed life.

Today, we know the story doesn't end at the cross in death. But put yourself for a moment there at that first Friday, when resurrection history hasn't yet unfolded in time. Hold on. Pray and hold fast to a kernel of hope that this is not the end. Fight and sweat. Have your crew tie you to the mast. Wonder in awe that what was to befall you is held on the shoulders of another son of man who has taken the sins of the world onto himself. Resist and hold the tension in the eerie calm of night when Death offers its inviting promises of rest and peace when all you want is rest and peace. Don't give up, and don't give in.

Life is just around the bend.

"See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exhalted. Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away, and who would have thought any more of his destiny?" (Is 52:13; 53:8)